New to Lemmy

Copying over the guide from !communityPromo@lemmy.ca so it's more accessible here

🙌 Communities for discovering new communities

🌐 Instances to look through

🔎 Search Engines

🔥 Apps and Browser Extensions

👽 Coming from Reddit?

There are a lot of different apps / frontends that can show stuff from Lemmy, and they vary in how well they support different link formats. Here is a short explainer:

Each entry below shows you what you should type (like this) and what you will see as a result (after the dash '-').

For each entry, some apps will support it and others will not. It can be helpful to include a few different link formats so that everyone can use the link easily.

NOTE: There is a bug on the Lemmy website right now. If you start typing a community or username, it will try to autocomplete it. DO NOT click that autocomplete, or it will mess up the link.

[!community@example.com](/c/community@example.com) - !community@example.com

• This is the universal format. If you click this link, the community will open in your home instance.
• This is the recommended method.
• If you are coming from Reddit, it is similar to how you could type /r/askReddit

[you can put whatever here](/c/community@example.com) - you can put whatever here

• This is another way to make a universal link. If you click this link, the community will open in your home instance.
• This works well if you can't use the method above. For example, if you want to stick a link in a shields.io badge, you can use this technique to still include a universal link.

example.com/c/community - https://example.com/c/community

• This is a hardcoded link. This is what you can copy and paste from the browser. If you click this link, the community will open on a specific instance. Anyone using a different instance (ex. anything except lemmy.ca in this case) will not be able to subscribe right away, and they will need to redirect it first.
• Sometimes you can't use the methods above. For example, if you want to create a nice thumbnail while promoting your community on !communityPromo@lemmy.ca, you will need to use this URL.
• If you use this method, try to use the other methods as well so people have options.

https://lemmyverse.link/c/community@example.com

• You can also use this external tool to automatically redirect users. Once the user clicks on the link, they will be redirected to the instance that they set. This can be great for new users that click on the link, who may not understand what is happening or how the instances work.
• This also works for posts, but I will write up a separate post for those

Mod: if you want to steal bits of this for an official sticky thread of your own or whatever feel free.

Newbies: Welcome to lemmy!

Where am I and what's going on?

You're on a platform called "Lemmy", a collection of discussion groups ("communities") around particular topics. You can think of it kind of like Reddit, or like a collection of old-school forums that all share a login.

Is Lemmy the Fediverse?

You might have heard the term "fediverse" thrown around, it's the name for a collection of platforms like Lemmy that all talk to each other. So Lemmy is just one small part of the Fediverse, but there are lots of others for you to investigate one day too :)

What about the Threadiverse?

Another Fediverse platform that works a bit like Lemmy does is called Kbin. Since both of them use a forum thread type structure for discussion, they became collectively known as the Threadiverse.

People keep talking about "instances" and I'm confused

Lemmy as a whole consists of lots of different websites, all running the "Lemmy" software and talking to each other. For example this community is hosted on lemmy.ca, whereas my user account is on lemm.ee, but I can post here anyway. They're two different websites (usually called "instances" or "servers"), but all part of the wider Lemmy platform.

You'll learn more about what this means as you go, but for the most part it's not super important to get started.

I clicked a link and it logged me out

Remember what we said about Lemmy actually being lots of websites? Chances are, you clicked a badly-formatted link that took you to a different one of those sites. You're not logged out of your account, you're just looking at another site.

If you're on the web, you can follow instructions in the sidebar and search for the community address from your instance's search page (magnifying glass icon at the top of the page). But if you're on a mobile app they all work differently so I can't sum that one up for you, sorry!

To create links that should work for everyone, you can use the ! syntax like so:

!newtolemmy@lemmy.ca

How do I find cool stuff?

Two main ways. First you can check out the All feed on your instance homepage. This shows all the content your instance knows about, from all the other Lemmy instances it talks to. Subscribe to any communities that catch your eye!

Alternatively you can use a search tool like https://lemmyverse.net/communities. Use the home icon in the top right to set your home instance, and search for stuff you want to talk about!

And if you're a fibre crafter, well, check out my profile because I post in a lot of relevant communities 😉

It can be hard for someone who's been here a while to explain things in a way that makes sense to absolute beginners. So if any of this was confusing, please just ask me in the comments and I'm happy to clarify.

Welcome, enjoy, and see you around!

• Add two spaces after a line of text, if you want to continue on the next line with no spaces.
  Like this (see this line just under the other!)!

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• In Lemmy, you can copy a picture in the computer's clipboard and paste it straight away in the text box with Ctrl+V!
• Note the star. Click three dots on a comment to see it or look straight on a thread to see it. It's a saving feature. When you deem something worth coming back to or to remember about, click it. It gets saved in your account
• Lemmy supports the spoiler system. If you want to hide text (appears when clicked on), use that. Its symbol in the text editor is an excalamtion mark inside a triangle
• Add "-" with a space before a line of text to make a list!
• using the "#" lets you create a tag. Through tags you can find content outside the post and the community where you see the tag, going beyond to different communities, posts and threads and maybe find something new and interesting that you can start following!
• Add ">" (with no space) before a line of text to quote something

Quotation!

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• See the dot above?
  If you want more space between paragraphs, you can use that (I know I do!). Makes reading text more clear, in my opinion!

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Lemmy has many interesting communities of various topics. Check some of them out and subscribe to them if you get interested! And if you don't find something that just should be there, consider creating one yourself!
Your own fresh new community grows slowly. Make sure to post regularly and talk about your community in other posts/threads to gain some visibility!

Welcome to Lemmy! If this is your first experience in the Fediverse, then welcome to that too!

Don't worry about understanding everything right away. We all took time to get it, and many of us are still learning. You'll know enough to start using Lemmy very quickly, and you can fill in the rest as you go.

This is a brand-new community, so we're still adding resources for you. Go ahead and say hi or ask your questions, either as a comment or in a new post.

See the pinned post on !communityPromo@lemmy.ca for a guide to finding new communities.