I’ve read that it should be possible, but my experience seems to show that that is incorrect, that you need a login for every instance where you wish to make a post or comment. Could someone who knows clarify this?
If you need a login for every instance of Lemmy to participate in non-local communities, then that will, I think, be the #1 issue with Lemmy adoption, and the main reason folks bounce off.
Edit: I was trying to comment on a post on lemdro.id, but it said a login was required. If that is to be the case, most users out there won’t understand an ability to see content but not participate in that content, simply due to instance logins. That was my point. If that isn’t true, and I should be able to comment on other instance posts, then I’ve experienced a bug or something.
Edited Edit: I believe this was a result of using Liftoff, where I was able to view a community on another instance, and I was logged into the app via my own instance, but it treated my viewing the other community as if I were on that site, instead of viewing it through my instance. So this things are, I think, working as intended, and that Liftoff made the presentation of things ambiguous. Thanks for all the polite replies. Definitely makes me feel more confident that Lemmy can be a good replacement for Reddit.
My mind boggles as to why someone would downvote this question. Why not just help, ffs?
I run a self-hosted instance, so I have some experience with what you’re asking. You do not need to sign into every instance to post or comment. Basically, you need to first find the desired community using the search function in your own instance. Once you’ve found it, you can view, post, or comment through your own instance. This is what Federation enables.
For example, let’s say I want to view posts or comment in a community over at lemmy.ml using my own instance. Let’s say the community is called c/asklemmy. As long as federation is enabled on both instances (which is the responsibility of the instance administrators), you can use the search function, within your own instance, to find the community and interact with it at your leisure.
When searching for a community on another instance, remember to specify that the community is on another instance. So, for asklemmy over at lemmy.ml, you would search for !asklemmy@lemmy.ml. The format is !(community name)@(instance domain). You can even copy and paste the URL of the community’s page into the search bar, and it will work just fine.
There’s documentation available at https://join-lemmy.org/docs/administration/federation_getting_started.html that explains all of this in more detail. Anyway, I hope this has been helpful, and welcome to Lemmy! (It’s so much better than Reddit).
P.S. If you’re looking for an iOS client for Lemmy, Memmy is really good.
My mind boggles as to why someone would downvote this question. Why not just help, ffs?
I run a self-hosted instance, so I have some experience with what you’re asking. You do not need to sign into every instance to post or comment. Basically, you need to first find the desired community using the search bar in your own instance. Once you’ve found it, you can view, post, or comment through your own instance. This is what Federation enables.
For example, let’s say I want to view posts or comment in a community over at lemmy.ml using my own instance. Let’s say the community is called c/asklemmy. As long as federation is enabled on both instances (which is the responsibility of the instance administrators), you can use the search function, within your own instance, to find the community and interact with it at your leisure.
When searching for a community on another instance, remember to specify that the community is on another instance. So, for asklemmy over at lemmy.ml, you would search for !asklemmy@lemmy.ml. The format is !(community name)@(instance domain). You can even copy and paste the URL of the community’s page into the search bar, and it will work just fine.
There’s documentation available at https://join-lemmy.org/docs/administration/federation_getting_started.html that explains all of this in more detail. Anyway, I hope this has been helpful, and welcome to Lemmy! (It’s so much better than Reddit).
P.S. If you’re looking for an iOS client for Lemmy, Memmy is really good.
You do not need a separate account for every instance. It wouldn’t be federation if every server was a silo.
I am able to see other communities, but not comment on posts in them without a login for that instance, in my experience. Is that supposed to be the case?
Try to use https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/469273-lemmy-universal-link-switcher
It would make it easier to just always go to your instance!
You have to find the same community in your home instance, instead of going to that instance directly.
I agree this is confusing, especially if you come there from a link. There’s no easy “go to this community on my instance” link right now, though there are user scripts to make this easier.
What you can do is copy a link to a community or post and paste it in the search on your home instance. That’ll hopefully show that post and allow you to subscribe.
My home instance is lemmy.one and I’m posting here on lemmy.ml right now
