This site is currently struggling to handle the amount of new users. I have already upgraded the server, but it will go down regardless if half of Reddit tries to join.
However Lemmy is federated software, meaning you can interact seamlessly with communities on other instances like beehaw.org or lemmy.one. The documentation explains in more detail how this works. Use the instance list to find one where you can register. Then use the Community Browser to find interesting communities. Paste the community url into the search field to follow it.
You can help other Reddit refugees by inviting them to the same Lemmy instance where you joined. This way we can spread the load across many different servers. And users with similar interests will end up together on the same instances. Others on the same instance can also automatically see posts from all the communities that you follow.
Edit: If you moderate a large subreddit, do not link your users directly to lemmy.ml in your announcements. That way the server will only go down sooner.
You say “interact seamlessly”, but do I need to sign up for each instance I intend to use?
if you're a registered user on a server, when you click [Communities], there you can see
You can subscribe to a community of any server which your server can federate with. The list of connected servers you can find via the /instances link at the bottom of the page.
There's an easy to use community search tool here https://browse.feddit.de/
If you've found a community you like to follow, translate the original URL to a federated URL You do this by putting the community URL of the original server in the search bar; e.g.
(This search functionality is available in the web interface, but not yet available in the Jerboa app)
The result will list the federated URL. A federated URL has the form:
https://<your server>/c/<community-id>@<other server>Visiting the federated link, and clicking [Subscribe] will make that community be federated to your server from now on. Your subscribed community will now also be listed under the [all] communities listing on your server.
Is there a newbie guide written up already somewhere? This is exactly the sort of things it needs, which should be linked to new signups.
Documentation etc can be found from their github page
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy
Sure it can be found there, but pointing newbies to github would be too demanding.
At the bottom of every page, there you find a link to the documentation pages.