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2y ago

YSK how to subscribe to kbin magazines from lemmy

Why YSK: making the most of the fediverse means aggregating content from as many places as possible, but it's not an intuitive process right now, especially for those using apps like Jerboa or Mlem.

I have been seeing some comments from people struggling to subscribe to kbin magazines from Lemmy so here's a step-by-step of how I've been doing it:

Note the name of the kbin magazine you want to subscribe to (example: kbin.social/m/books)
Log into your Lemmy instance from a browser
The Lemmy instance you are registered with will be the first part of the URL and the kbin community will be the second part. Example: I'm registered with lemmy.world so to register with the kbin Books magazine I would type https://lemmy.world/c/books@kbin.social
From there, just hit subscribe and it will start showing up anywhere you're logged into your Lemmy instance (I use Jerboa).

Hopefully this helps spread the word!

84 comments

This stuff should be automated and let the back end automation handle this stuff for less technically inclined folks.
- It will be. There are a lot of bugs and issues right now.
  
  Is there a repo link to track features and bugs?
- Keep your pants on... This patform had maybe 12k users less than a month ago. There's gonna be some growing pains.
  
  Nah dawg these pants stay off #dicksout

You can also search for it in the communities (browser only), just sort by All.
- Thanks for sharing that!

Could you please add a “Why YSK:”? It’s rule #2. It's also helpful for readability, and informs readers about the importance of the content. Thank you. :)
- Done, thank you!

This was not working for me and I finally figured out why. I was using the search under "Communities" and not the general search in the upper right. It is counter-intuitive that the communities search won't find unfederated communities while the general search will, but that is how it works.
That you all for this post. It did ultimately get me where I needed to be.
- They show up fine in the communities search for me. https://i.imgur.com/iHO4wIP.png
  
  I was using the search box above the "List of Communities" and getting no results. When I switched to clicking on the magnifying glass icon at the top of the regular page it worked. I don't know why.

Dear sweet baby Jesus, this solves so many problems I had with lemmy. Now I've got "subreddits", lemmywinks, lemmstwrs?
- They are just "communities".
  
  Lemmunities
  
  This right here, no need to re-brand things that already exist and work as intended.
- sublemmies... wait no it starts with c... clublemmits?

There really needs to be a Lemmy/Kbin version of Graze for Mastodon
- While not identical, I'm currently using AnyVerse and Kbin Link to help with this.
  
  Thanks for this.
- @airportline I was just thinking this. Graze has saved Mastodon for me
  @morelikepinniped

Anyone know how to do this the other way around? Subscribing to lemmy communities from kbin?
edit: it seems to work the same way. you just have to search for the community in kbin first or otherwise it will show a 404.

Wow you posted this right as I was looking for how to do it, lol. Thanks!

I've been trying to get this to work for someone (I'm on kbin, they're on lemmy) but I just get a 404 error. The magazine is kbin.social/m/LucidDreaming, so following your guide I should try https://lemmy.world/c/LucidDreaming@kbin.social, correct? Any idea what's going wrong?
- Have them go to search, make sure everything is searching all, and have them put https://kbin.social/m/LucidDreaming as the search query.
  There’s a solid chance they won’t be able to see anything posted prior to when they subscribe, but at least that will make the community federate with that person’s Lemmy instance.
  
  They really need to fix that. It shouldn't require a subscription to federate. That just means that an /all view is wrong and from this thread, we can see it's a major UX stumbling block
- I think these instructions only work for communities someone on your instance has already subscribed to. Instead, try going https://lemmy.world/search and entering the full URL for the community ( https://kbin.social/m/LucidDreaming ). It'll spin for a little longer than usual but it should show up in the search results.
  Edit to add: The community will probably appear empty, however... new posts will show up, but anything from before the you subscribed probably won't. If you want to reply to a particular comment, though, you can make it show up by searching for its full URL.
  
  I was about to reply saying that the search didn't work, that I could only see two comments I made in kbin.social sharing the link, but then I pressed the next button and there was a one line link to the community on the next page. Really weird formatting, but that did it! Thanks a lot! :)
  EDIT: @cdiv So it turns out that this worked for lemmy.world but not for sh.itjust.works. When I search there I only see comments where people have mentioned the link, but no actual link to the community. This is so weird and confusing lol
- Hello again, I see there are still issues with your community, unfortunately. Hopefully someone here can help!
  
  Thanks anyway :)
- I had the same problem. 404 and not appearing in the communities search. I gave it a day or so, and it worked. Maybe its some kind of syncing delay between instances.
- It seems to have started federating now. All new posts from this point in that magazine should be visible in Lemmy.world.

i did this with a couple magazines and they're sitting as 'subscribe pending'. how long does that usually take?
- Yeah, I have some of them like that too
  
  Same! What do!?
- Same here. And my front page is only one single community lol

Thanks, so kbin is a fediverse server that is NOT lemmy, right? Can we see it if we search communities?
- Yes.

Really? in the browser I've had reasonable luck just searching the magazine Uri directly in my Lemmy instance.
No need to get the lemmy.world version.
Honestly. I find I almost never get success searching for random kbin and Lemmy communities/magazines in Jerboa - Bowser is king of Lemmy search.

I started on lemmy.world, but I really like the look and layout of kbin. How would I go about bringing the lemmy.world subs over to kbin?
- It's a manual process right now, they don't have a transfer function like Mastodon does. But I imagine this will be upgraded in the future. I'll typically just go to my instance’s search function and filter for just communities and just start searching and adding - haven't tried Kbin fully so I don't know the experience on that platform.
- i want to know too. can someone let me know if an answer was posted? many thanks!

Saving for later (is there a better way?)

Thanks 👍

Great info!

Tried all the tricks in this thread, but just get 404 or zero results when searching.

Thanks dude. I was clueless too
- Glad I could help! We're learning together haha

I'm not having much luck finding smaller kbin magazines on lemmy. Hope things improve a bit
- Probably the magazine has to be federated first - and so it has to be searched from the instance. I'll provide example using magazine AskKbin and assuming you're using browser version of Lemmy. The local adress for magazine is https://kbin.social/m/AskKbin
  Go to your Lemmy and press search button. Search for the magazine using the local adress of the magazine (https://kbin.social/m/AskKbin). Once searched, it should start federating and you can subscribe to it. You should be able to easily subscribe to the magazine as well - as it is going to appear as community in search results. Similiarly you would initialte federation with communities from other instances of lemmy, if they aren't federated yet
  
  Thanks. I got it working. Not sure if it was doing what you said or another thing (I tried a bunch of stuff). But it seems to be doing better now

I didn't even know that you can connect both platforms. Gonna try it later, thank you.

Thank you. I just got here and this is super useful!

Good stuff, I've been wondering about this since joining this morning. thanks for the write up.

Comment to save this since I don't know how to save posts on kbin (or if it's even possible yet?)
- Upvoting a post basically saves it for you. It’ll show up in your profile once you upvote I believe.

Still the same issue I've been dealing with.
On my personal instance, not Lemmy world, I am able to search for and find kbin magazines, for an example https://kbin.social/m/tech
However, when I go to https://myinstance/c/tech@kbin.social and hit subscribe it leaves me subscribe pending no matter how long I wait. Even canceling and clicking it again multiple times never gets me anywhere.
- I ran into a helpful post about that recently. It seems that sometimes it can take a while for the a subscription to be processed. If you end up with the yellow "pending" it often stays that way. If you click on pending to cancel it, and try subscribing again it is more likely to go through. Annoying, but true.
  Also, it may be superstition on my part, but if I click subscribe and just let that tab sit for a while I a more likely to eventually get a "joined" response while if I refresh it and get "pending" I'm stuck with that.
- I've read elsewhere that the Pending status isn't accurate and you have likely subscribed. Try checking your feed while pending and see if content is there.

Precisely whey I asked this: https://lemmy.world/comment/381331

Thanks! Subscribing to communities/magazines in other instances has always been a bit complicated, so this easy step-by-step is really useful.

I tried it the other way around, but I noticed that I can not find all Lemmy groups on kbin.
- Some groups could be from defederated servers
  
  I tried to find watercooling@lemmy.ml on kbin, but it showed me the message "empty". Maybe it was my fault as I am very inexperienced in kbin and Lemmy. I am a reddit refuge.

This is awesome, thank you!!

Can you not just search for !books@kbin.social like every other instances communities?

Thanks!

84 comments