Beehaw Support @beehaw.org esaru @beehaw.org 1y ago

How do I subscribe to a community on another Lemmy instance?

How can I subscribe to a community on another Lemmy instance using the Beehaw account? I feel a bit embarrassed asking this question because it seems like a basic task, and I may have overlooked something obvious. However, I did make an effort to search the internet before coming here.

Here are the steps I've tried, which don't seem to be working:

On Beehaw, I navigated to the "Communities" section.
In the search bar, I attempted several searches:
- https://programming.dev/c/meta
  
  => Result: The search page appears empty, without explicitly stating "No results." However, I can click the "next" button an infinite number of times.
- I tried entering [email protected]
  
  => Result: It displays "No results."

13 comments

Just letting you know I appreciate your question because the answers are going to help me out, too. Many of us are learning how to use Lemmy, there are no stupid questions.
No worries. Lemmy's interface is certainly different, you'll have to do a bit of stumbling at first. And Lemmy itself is still maturing and the federation features are always going to have a sort of disjointedness.

Most likely, no one on this instance ever searched for that community so there's no record in the database when you searched. This prompts the instance to start looking at other instances which often takes more time than the timeout on the search results. The good news is that the search continues in the background and the local instance database will be updated with a match. So the easiest solution is to wait a minute or two and search for https://programming.dev/c/meta again. It with likely show right up.

FYI you don't need to go to the communities page to search. On the top of every page is a search link (on mobile it's revealed from the menu icon on the upper right).
- Thanks! I read somewhere else as well about having to wait a bit, but in this case it doesn't seem to be the reason. The searched community shows up when being searched via the search icon on the top right of the page, but still doesn't show up in the search via the community section, even with scope set to "all", and the search form looking exactly the same.
  
  Problem is practically solved now, just still a bit confused.
  
  Yeah the search icon is the recommended way to search. As I said, Lemmy is a maturing software project. I hope people see as good enough while it improves.
On Beehaw, I navigated to the “Communities” section. In the search bar, I attempted several searches:

Try using the general search instead (the magnifying glass icon in the upper right corner if on desktop, expanded menu if on mobile). There the community should appear.
- Thanks, that worked! I did overlook that little icon indeed.
  
  I'm still a bit curious about the other search dialog of the Community page: Even with the type set to "Communities" and the scope set to "all," it doesn't yield any results. Expecting it to display the searched community might be a misconception on my part about how Lemmy or the Fediverse works, or could it be more like a usability issue in Lemmy? The search form looks exactly the same with the exact same parameters.
  
  I tried it too and it seems like it only works with the local part, e.g. memes instead of [email protected]

13 comments