Hi. I’ve subscribed to several communities outside my instance already, but I’m having a problem where I can’t seem to repeat the process for certain communities.

For example, I wanted to go to /c/test on lemmy.ml. But going to lemmy.ml/c/test takes me outside of Beehaw, my home instance, so I can’t post or subscribe from there. So I checked how I could visit this community, and its URL is https://beehaw.org/c/lemmy_support@lemmy.ml. I then tried going to https://beehaw.org/c/test@lemmy.ml, but that gives me an error page.

What do? I can’t find /c/test on the communities page, either.

Apologies if I’m being dumb.

  • Barbarian@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    Hey! So, lemme explain:

    You can only see communities and easily subscribe if at least 1 person in your instance has done it already.

    If you’re the first one from your instance to do so, what you need to do is copy the full URL (https://sh.itjust.works/c/shadowrun, for example), go to the communities list at the top of the site, hit search to get the options up, change from “Communities” to “All”, then wait for your instance to pull in the content (maybe 5-10 seconds or so)

    Finally, click through to the Community and click subscribe. Now that community is pulled onto your server for yourself and everyone else in your server.

    Can provide images and additional clarification if needed. I know it’s a little janky and unintuitive, but a Lemmy server can’t just pull in all communities from all servers all the time, they’d explode. There needs to be at least 1 person who wants to see that community (subscribed) for the server to know to do that.

      • Barbarian@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        That’s really weird, just tried it myself from your search. Anything subscribed to in the past work from your instance, but nothing new (I tried chat, ohio and fediverse too). I don’t think either server is blocking eachother, no mention of that in the instance list here or here… I’m really confused by that. Definitely not something that’s supposed to happen.

        I’d say contact the midwest.social admins and ask them to double-check their federation config, something fishy is going on there.

  • planish@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    8·
    1 year ago

    I always have to copy-paste the URL of the community on its home instance, or the !community@instance.tld form, into the search box on my instance, with no spaces before or after it, and then mash the search button for like 30 seconds until it federates over and appears as a search result.

    • Red - 🤖30%@reddthat.comEnglish
      8·
      1 year ago

      Pro tip, if its a community it actually federates very fast depending on the destination instance. It’s just that the “Search” result box takes a while.

      If you do a search for a community, press enter, then change back to the Communities tab, select All it should show up there before it shows up in your Search result.

      The UI is a bit not great for showing but it’s getting there. Hopefully in one of the next Lemmy-UI releases they add better UI regarding the ‘we are federating, hang on a sec’ items

  • beaker@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    You’re not being dumb, that sounds like how it ought to work to me!

    What worked for me was to log in to my home instance, search for the whole URL for the community, and then, after getting no results from the search, change the type of the search to All. Sometimes I would change it to Communities and then to All. Eventually after a couple tries the link should show up in the results. Click it to browse to the community and then you can subscribe. It’s a bit cumbersome but it worked for me.

    • guildz@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      That delay is from your instance and the instance you searched for exchanging information and syncing its database. You can actually see this in action if you have the “all” tab on your instances homepage open while you do the search.

  • roblarky@beehaw.orgEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    I was literally just looking into this as well!

    Like I’m signed up to beehaw, but say if I go to sh.itjust.works I can view communities, but subscribe asks to login

  • Admin-Mike@lemmy.nine-hells.netEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    On your home instance, search for the community you want to sub. Eg: search for http://lemmy.ml/c/test - it will initially say nothing found but after about 10 seconds you should be able to find it in the All Communities list on your home instance. Click on the name of the community to view it, or click subscribe.