We now have our third alternate frontend setup, voyager. This one is a mobile first frontend

https://v.programming.dev

Mlmym coming next (old reddit style) but ive been having issues with it so unsure when

Continuing with alternate frontends for the instance, we now have the photon frontend hosted at https://p.programming.dev/

Voyager should be coming tomorrow

Hey everyone

Its been a bit since the instance has been started and the community handling has become mostly stable so we are changing how community creation works

You should now see a button in the UI called create community that you can use to create a community without needing to go through our community request zone. Instead of filtering communities ahead of time we will retroactively check on new communities and delete them if they dont match the instance

This should be a much better experience for community creation instead of needing to dig around for the community request community. This also means the vote threshold is no more as it doesnt seem needed anymore now that its stable here and things shouldnt be coming in too quick

The UI still isnt ideal since its not apparent that the creation will be moderated afterwards but hopefully in the future we should be able to make something to show its happening (and possibly limit the community until its approved but make it still happen through the button). But for now ill be updating the sidebar with info on the new system

In the future I will draft up a mod welcome guide and mod guidelines and post a link to them here once I get time to do so

Please do not community spam. Try not to mod more than 5 communities unless you have the time to handle that many things

If we notice someone is community squatting by mass creating things and then doing nothing with them theyll be handled and the communities will either be deleted or put into the adoption community !adopt_a_community@programming.dev

Hey everyone! Ive been messing around with getting alternate frontends hosted for the instance

To start it off we now have the alexandrite frontend hosted at https://a.programming.dev

(a in the front to match how other instances have been doing it so its consistent)

Im also attempting to get voyager, photon, and mlmym hosted as those are the other main ones. If you have any suggestions for other frontends let me know and I can try to get it set up

Note for all of these its not guaranteed they will be supported forever since it depends on the developers of them to update to the most recent lemmy versions. If we end up dropping one due to lack of support for recent versions ill announce it here

Hey everyone! Finished up a recap system for lemmy where you can request your stats for the past year (things like posts made, comments made, top posts for the year, etc.)

Hope you enjoy! Theres a role it assigns you and an image you can copy at the bottom

Finished up a recap site for lemmy similar to the recaps other sites like spotify, etc. have been doing!

Shows things like how many posts youve made, how many comments, your top posts of the year, the top communities you participate in, etc.

Theres a little role it assigns you and an image at the bottom that can be easily shared into the thread

Currently supports any instance running a lemmy compatible api (lemmy, pangora, etc.)

Lets you generate and then copy shields.io style badges to show different stats exposed by the api

For example for this community I can generate badges such as

Subscribers

Monthly Active Users

etc.

Theres a system built in that lets you customize how they look and then generate them again with those looks. Supports badges for instances, communities, or users

Link again just in case your software doesnt handle the first one

Hey everyone! Thanks for being part of p.d in 2023

Ive been working on some things so figured I would give a little sneak peek into some new things that will be arriving in the next couple months

Lemmy Recap

Originally wanted to get this out before the new year but ended up getting sick so itll likely drop sometime this week. Youll be able to see stats like how many posts you made, how many comments you made, your top post, etc.

Icon & Banner Poll

Once im done with the recap ill be running some polls for what people like more between a new logo I designed and the old one and It would possibly have the icon for the instance switch depending on how the vote goes

Pangora shields.io badges & bot list

Adding some new supporting sites for pangora. There will be custom shields.io badges that can be used to display instance, community, or user stats and a bot list to list the bots that currently exist

Supporting sites

New supporting sites for programming.dev such as an improved status page, a donation page, a team page, etc.

Programming challenges

Im bringing back programming challenges but they'll be mostly ran using a supporting site and will be much less frequent (probably 1 challenge a week)

Lemmy Event: Safe Crackers

Should hopefully be running a new event in february called safe crackers that people in any lemmy instance can participate in

Hope you enjoy the instance in the coming year!

If youre interested in chatting we have both a discord and a matrix community at https://discord.com/invite/kwyxvYEYt4 and https://matrix.to/#/#p.d:matrix.org

If youre interested in helping out with coding various things for the instance such as the supporting sites or a new backend + frontend thats been getting built feel free to let me know and I can add you to the areas for that. Languages used are mostly Javascript, Typescript and Java

Back with another community health check-in to see how communities in the instance are doing

• Lively- 5k users/month or above
• Active - 201-4999 users/month
• Moderate - 51-200 users/month
• Quiet - 11-50 users/month
• Dead - 0-10

Communities

• Lively communities: 1 (1%) (~)
• Active communities: 14 (7%) (+1% from last month)
• Moderate communities: 19 (10%) (-5% from last month)
• Quiet communities: 64 (34%) (+9% from last month)
• Dead communities: 90 (48%) (-4% from last month)
• Total communities: 188 (+11 from last month)

• Active communities increased a bit
• Moderate and dead communities decreased
• The amount of quiet communities increased a bunch

Advent of code

Advent of code was at 136 active users/month before this month started and now its at 839 (as this month was when advent of code occured)

Least active communities

(These are ones that will be prioritized for making active) (theres a lot in the dead category so these are random ones from that, not all of them)

• !perl@programming.dev
• !erlang@programming.dev
• !dart@programming.dev
• !swift@programming.dev
• !graphql@programming.dev
• !lua@programming.dev
• !flutter@programming.dev
• !matlab@programming.dev
• !latex@programming.dev
• !lisp@programming.dev

In the future im going to try to automate these stats so I dont have to do this manually

AoC has ended for the year! Congrats to everyone who participated

Here are some stats from the instance leaderboard

Top 10 Users

1. SekoiaTree
2. Leo Uino
3. Michon van Dooren
4. funnyboy-roks
5. PhiliPdB
6. jhuang97
7. Alex Utter
8. hades
9. Jindřich Ivánek
10. abclop99

Misc Stats

• 91 Users got at least 1 star
• 14 Users got 50 stars

Link to full results:

https://jeroenheijmans.github.io/advent-of-code-surveys/

The instance has now been upgraded up to 0.19.1 from 0.18.5

Due to some authentication changes you will need to log in again and set up 2fa again if you had it previously enabled (since the 2fa process changed to prevent people locking themselves out)

Code Highlighting

If you make code blocks using the three backticks method the code in it will automatically be highlighted based on the detected language (in lemmy-ui aka the site)

Surrounding in 1 backtick lets you do it inline

E.g.

`console.log("hello world")` becomes console.log("hello world")

```
console.log("hello world")
```

Becomes

console.log("hello world")

The blocks will be light if youre on the light theme and dark if youre on the dark theme

Instance Blocking

This is for lemmy-ui, alt frontends may not have support yet or may be done a different way

Go to your profile settings by hitting your name, then settings in the top right

There should be a blocks section you can switch to. Go to the instances part of that and search for the instance you want to block

Blocking an instance will prevent you from seeing posts from that instance

Scaled sort

When you go to choose a sort while browsing posts you should see an option called scaled. This is hot but takes into account the active users to boost communities that need it. (E.g. a community with 20 active users will be shown more than a community with 10000)

Remote following

You can follow a community while browsing it from the site of another instance. To do this just hit subscribe for the community while not logged in on that other instance and it'll bring up a pop-up where you can enter your instance you want to subscribe from

Https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/pull/1875#issuecomment-1727790414