Server Rundown Part 6

Hello all, that time of the week again!

In case you’re new and want some context, here are the previous parts:

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5

TL;DR

  • New Theme - Its very shiny!
  • New front-end client - old.lemmy.zip!
  • Bot updates - bot does even more than last time!
  • Funding - Thank you so much!
  • Interaction - Weekly reminder to not lurk!
  • We want a mod or two - we promise not to refer to you as “landed gentry”!
  • Server update - graphs and stuff!

New Theme

Sami has been hard at work looking at themes and tweaks to make Lemmy.zip stand out as a unique instance. Sami put together this awesome looking theme and we’ve applied it as the default theme so all new users get to see our glory. If you do notice any issues, let Sami know so he can look into it.

We’ve discussed other themes too, maybe a custom light mode theme so watch this space. You can set any theme you want in your user settings.

New front-end Client

In a bid to continue to provide cool ways to interact with Lemmy.zip, at the beginning of the week we set up and tested Old.Lemmy.Zip which is a really cool reddit-alike front end with features such as infinite scrolling. If that is your sort of thing, check it out! (We notice some of the bigger instances have copied us now :))

Bot Updates

Following on from last week when the bot PM’d all new users, the bot will now PM anyone who creates a new community with helpful information on how to gain users and traction. It looks a little like this:

https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/56dbcde7-37c5-48a9-845b-92b40c72c20e.png

We’re still working on adding suggestions so if you have any you think would be useful for new moderators to get users, let me know and I can add them in to the PM.

Funding

As always, a massive thank you to those who continue to support Lemmy.zip financially.

As we’ve existed over a month now we’re starting to see invoices rolling in which have been added to OpenCollective, and we’ll continue to add these as we get them. Once we’re in a clearer position r.e. long term funding, we’ll look to invest in an improved server. Hopefully we can share more info come August.

Interaction

Welcome to all the new users of Lemmy.zip this week, whether you’re just browsing different instances or have made Lemmy.zip your home.

As I like to drone on about, Lemmy lives or dies on content and interaction. So if you were previously a lurker, please don’t be afraid to join in. This isn’t Reddit. You’re not fighting against bot spam and power mods. Everyone is genuinely interested in your opinion here.

Please make sure to vote, comment, and create posts or communities :)

A call for Mods!

We’re looking at growing our “official” (I’m not sure thats the right word but it will have to do!) communities on Lemmy.zip and are looking for one or two people who would like to help out. Currently that would be the Home and Gaming communities, but we’re open to the creation of other communities.

If this is something you’d be interested in doing, please join our Matrix Chat and either send me a PM or let us know in the chat, and we can discuss further. There aren’t any restrictions (preferably a Lemmy.zip user who is active) and we’ll consider anyone interested on a case by case basis.

Server updates

Time for the fun graphs!

This is the CPU usage over the last week. https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/fb453842-d6b6-42dc-96e4-a6369c41c919.png

And here are some bonus network related graphs over the last week: https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/bf0f1e54-686c-41a5-b631-28cc17a85f53.png

Our image bucket continues to fill up nicely:

https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/b61ba3d1-ebdd-4fb5-bf55-f476eeeb05da.png

And here are our Cloudflare stats over 7 days:

https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/7a65d960-42f6-4f6e-af61-7511298157cc.png

Not much has changed in the way of visitor traffic, USA still tops the leaderboard:

https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/e62d7d08-61aa-4e03-86bd-7ae73bad8f63.png

And here is our bandwidth over the last 30 days:

https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/b60c7632-e846-4116-88db-4842237a1dcd.png

Interestingly the numbers seem to show that Saturday is the least busy day for us, with an early/mid-week peak!

That’s all this week, but as always let me know if there is anything else you’d like to know about.

Thanks

Demidogrick

GeneralCricket,

Old.lemmy.zip looks very cool, might even be able to get the wife to try Lemmy out with how familiar the layout feels. I agree with the others that the stats are very neat too.

A question on the mobile site: Once voyager is installed to home screen, is there any difference in your server load whether I initially used vger.app or m.lemmy.zip to install it? Assuming I’m logged into, and using, lemmy.zip regardless.

Demigodrick,

No difference in reality, voyager runs very light anyway so it makes little difference which one you use, I’ve just tweaked our version to have this instance as the default :)

altima_neo,
@altima_neo@lemmy.zip avatar

Very good work, boss! I did enjoy the new theme as well.

Im digging the old.lemmy.zip front end, but am experiencing some minor issues with it.

Demigodrick,

I’ve just applied the latest update to it, so hopefully thats some of the bugs fixed!

v4ld1z,
@v4ld1z@lemmy.zip avatar

So, I imagine additional funding is always great to cover the expenses of the server. How much are you currently paying out of your own pockets? Are you “in need” of users contributing right now? Didn’t really understand the graphic shown on OpenCollective, but would definitely like to contribute.

Demigodrick,

So upfront I put about 60GBP into the server which was roughly 12 months of funding the original server we were on. Since then we’ve upgraded the core server and added the image server. Out of my own pocket on top I’ve paid for the domain for the 2 years, paid for the status server for 12 months and paid for email for 3 years. These are “small” costs in comparison and I don’t mind paying for these myself.

With the upgraded server the costs have roughly doubled, so the community funding is now helping to pay for that. We’re also looking to upgrade the server again, either to add more cores to the shared vps we’re using or to move to a dedicated server, but a dedicated server is a large jump in cost.

OpenCollective shows the current funding and the funding over the next 12 months if recurring donors continue their donations. The costs I’ve added are the approx yearly running costs at our current server level.

I want to be cautious with funding so while the approx yearly amount looks good it’s an approximation on recurring funding and I don’t take that into account. So we’re technically covered for 12 months at this point, but extra funding would allow for a server upgrade for more performance.

Hopefully that answers the question but let me know if you have any more :)

v4ld1z,
@v4ld1z@lemmy.zip avatar

Yes, it does. Thanks a bunch!

possiblylinux127,

Is it possible to turn off the new theme?

Sami,
@Sami@lemmy.zip avatar

Yup, just click on your username on the top right, select settings and scroll down to Themes

https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/904803d4-2465-453e-a5f2-9bd6beff2668.png

There you can set your own selection that will ignore the instance default. In this case the old one was darkly or lightly (depending on your browser being dark or light mode I think?) so either of those will be what you’re looking for.

possiblylinux127,

That’s what I did but apparently it takes a while to apply

Demigodrick,

Yeah, browser caching stops the themes from applying straight away. You can do a force refresh using shift-f5/control-f5 to force the browser to reload the page with the new theme :)

all4one,

I feel like I’ve seen a lot of positive referrals to lemmy.zip on other instances this last week. Which is cool since you all are doing a great job.

Grandsinge,

Really enjoy these posts and the transparency. Hope to be able to donate a bit in the coming weeks. Keep up the good work!

47_alpha_tango,

Interaction is in a strange place. All the posts on the 4 communities I have here get upvoted regularly but very comments or new posts that aren’t by me get posted.

Come and say high in any or all of my communities. I don’t bite. Promise.

!granturismo
!playstation
!retrogaming
!startrek

all4one,

So do I still have to subscribe? I thought I was supposed to get all the local stuff anyway.

Sami,
@Sami@lemmy.zip avatar

If you filter by Local then you would see anything from the communities here even if you aren’t subscribed to each one but if you filter by Subscribed then you only see stuff from communities you are subscribed to here and elsewhere.

all4one,

I’ve been filtering by all or local. Totally missed the front page option. Thanks!

Demigodrick, (edited )

It really is in a strange place! I think the stat is 95% to 99% of people are lurkers. Which about lines up with our userbase too. We’re slightly (and i mean very slightly - about half a percent) more active than the big instances, which is why I try to encourage people to interact wherever they can.

Upvotes are great, then you know people are seeing the content, but comments and other users posting absolutely help to build a community.

47_alpha_tango,

I know that Mastodon is part of the fediverse but is it worth reposting content from my communities to Mastodon? As far as I understand Mastodon, people tend to follow hashtags rather than communities so would posting content with links to Lemmy communities be worthwhile?

Demigodrick,

I’ve seen people are starting to add hashtags to posts that link to the mastadon trending pages, so by all means go for it. I’ve not used mastadon (have never used twitter or similar personally) so not sure how it works when linking to lemmy, but I imagine if they’re federated with us then they’ll be able to follow those posts via mastadon.

47_alpha_tango,

I have no idea how it works either. I can see Lemmy communities which shows the community sidebar but no posts are visible from Mastodon.

If someone could help out with getting posts to show on mastodon it could go a long way with helping with community engagement here.

Demigodrick,

I’ll have a look today if I get chance, been meaning to check out mastadon anyway!

47_alpha_tango,

I think I’ve figured it out. Posts and comments weren’t showing on the Mastodon Instance I joined (mastodon.online) however once I followed my own communities from my Mastodon account all new posts and comments started showing.

It seams that content only shows once someone from that instance follows the community.

At least I think that’s what’s happening. I’m pretty new to this whole federation thing.

Demigodrick,

Ah yeah that would make sense! As you’re probably the first person to seek these communities from that mastadon instance then you would need to subscribe before the content here pulls through, but once that’s done everyone should be able to see the content here. Glad it’s sorted :)

v4ld1z,
@v4ld1z@lemmy.zip avatar

To piggyback off your comment, I’d appreciate it a lot if you checked out mine too:

!sekiro

!bloodborne

Thanks!

aika,

!tea would welcome new posters aswell. The community has grown, but I’m not seeing a lot of activity there, sadly.

47_alpha_tango,

I’m a coffee drinker personally but I wish you luck.

zebus,

Yea that’s right, you were doing old.lemmy before it was cool 😎

sudoroot,
@sudoroot@lemmy.zip avatar

Man I really love seeing all the stats on these posts, super fun to see. This instance really is the best!

Demigodrick,

Thanks, appreciate the kind words! :)

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