I absolutely would have if things were handled differently, but at this point my only goal is to see spez get his ass fired.

Ah, it seems as though my issue is indeed an existing username and a lack of error message.

There seems to be an issue with the signup process on lemmy.ca. I've been trying to signup for a while today but the Sign Up button just keeps spinning when I click it. I've tried numerous things to try to fix it and nothing seems to work. Signed up on a different server so I could report the issue.

If I can eventually get it to work, I'll be hosting my personal Lemmy instance on a Hetzner CX21 VPS (2 CPU, 4GB RAM). Unfortunately after about a dozen attempts, with many variables tweaked to try to narrow down the issue, I still get nothing but a spinning button when I try to login after installation. I find it so odd that some people have no problem getting it up-and-running, and it simply won't work for others.

After searching the first time, wait a few minutes and search again, it will probably show up. I had the same issue yesterday and apparently you need to do this the first time a remote community is accessed from a local instance.

I've already investigated using a subdomain, and it may have to be the way I go for now, but it's not really ideal. @greg@example.com is much nicer and easier to remember and give out than @greg@lemmy.example.com or @greg@l.example.com.

Plus I'm (hopefully) foreseeing a future of running multiple federated apps that allow delegation, so if I wanted to have a Lemmy instance, a Matrix instance, and a Mastadon instance, if they all eventually allow delegation I can give everyone @greg@example.com for literally any of my federated services, instead of @greg@lemmy.example.com, @greg@matrix.example.com, etc.

I gave up on setting up my own instance today for these exact reasons. Brand new install, multiple browsers, no matter the username, no matter the length of the password, all I get is a spinning circle when I try to login with my brand new admin account. No response whatsoever from the forgot password link either.