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How do I subscribe to a community outside my instance? (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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/[email protected]. I then tried going to https://beehaw.org/c/[email protected], 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.

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[–] Barbarian 10 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

And the devs have said they're working to make this happen more automatically.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Any idea why this process wouldn't work for a particular Community?

In this post both OP and me are unable to find [email protected], while other Communities from midwest.social work fine

[–] Barbarian 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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.