Meta

I've been having trouble keeping this instance up - right now, it's a problem with proxy errors between the docker containers as well as with the Ansible scripts. It's taking too much time to maintain.

I'll do my best to keep the server up until 31 Oct 2023. After that, it will likely be shut down.

Hey all! You may have noticed that Wayfarers' Haven has been down. I noticed, too, but didn't have time to get to it until the weekend.

It turns out that the docker images had become so bloated that there was no longer enough disk space to do anything at all. A simple docker system prune -a --volumes sorted that right out and I'll set a cron job to handle that going forward.

With that said, this simple issue showed the vulnerabilities of an instances with a single admin. I'm sorry for the downtime and confusion. Personally, I'll be creating a backup user on other instances using this tool: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim

You can read the breakdown of the XSS incident at Lemmy.world.

This won't be an issue for Wayfarers' Haven because we don't actually have any custom emoji.

My main account was indeed also the admin account for the server. If I had seen that script, that would have made this server vulnerable to the attack - I may have and we just missed it out of sheer luck. That and the backup account have both been moved to alternate accounts - I'm now following security best practices by separating out admin and every day use users.

The only practical change here is that I now have to log in as a separate user to approve applications and if I feel like changing the sidebar. I'll live. :)

You'll probably have heard about Meta's Threads which is a Twitter replacement running on Activity Pub - that means that it can and likely will federate with the rest of the Fediverse.

There are strong feelings about this, from petition: Defederate any instances that federates with threads proactivly , add threads.net on blocklists everywhere., citing the triple E problem. Then there are other opinions where it's worth creating a place for everyone and having access to the Threads content from the Fediverse without using the Threads interface.

My initial thought here is to wait and see. I don't think immediate action is going to matter all that much and defederation literally takes a few clicks. This is a tiny instance and one of its strengths is being able to connect to everyone else.

What are your thoughts?

Quick server update:

Upgraded to Lemmy 0.18.1 - lots of goodies including new themes in the user profile, better new/active/hot filtering, etc. See full changelog for more details.

Checked the server status:

• Currently using 18/40GB of storage. Lemmy itself is using about 11 GB with half going to images and half to the database. This isn't what we're uploading ourselves but due to federation.
• CPU and RAM usage seem to be comfortable.
• Checked into upgrade options on Hetzner - these will be reasonable. I can continue with the 3,90 euro/month package for the moment.

cross-posted from: https://startrek.website/post/209066

We've been investigating some recurring issues with the user experience on the instance, and have traced it back to the way Lemmy handles language settings.

Here's the TL;DR on how to ensure you see all of the content on this instance:

In your user settings, make sure "Language" is set to both "English" and "Undetermined".

On desktop, you can use CTRL+click to select both options.

This will allow you to see content for which the author has not set a language, and content which has been set to "English".

Per the Lemmy.world decision to defederate from Exploding-heads.com, I've decided to do the same for Wayfarers' Haven. Given the research shown in the admin post, I don't see any reason to keep us associated with this server.

cross-posted from: https://thesimplecorner.org/post/53987

LemmyTools 0.1.2

New for 0.1.2:

• Auto-Expand and Click&Drag to expand lemmy images!
• Hide Lemmy Sidebars - More space for images on feed
• Auto unblur NSFW images option
• Option to enable old.Reddit (from https://github.com/soundjester/lemmy_monkey) - Thank you!
• Hover to activate lemmy Toolbar
• Significant UI changes
• Reworked easy button for offsite

Fixes

• Fix for '#' breaking easy subscribe button
• Fix for script breaking other sites due to poor isLemmy implementation.
• Fixed memory allocation issue with eventHandlers
• Various UI bug fixes (not showing all communities, settings menu display, etc...)

Script Features:

• Adds “Easy Subscribe” button to remote instance communities.
• Adds a collapsible sidebar on the side of screen that shows a searchable list of your subscribed communities.
• Adds link back to home instance and a community browser.
• Adds an options menu to configure LemmyTools settings.

Feature for future releases:

• When off site collect a list of communities and display in sidebar for easy subscription. (beginning implementation 0.1.2)
• Create communities grouping function.
• Sort sub list by recently visited
• Create addon for firefox/chrome.

Installation and Configuration:

1 - Browser must have a Userscript addon (Tampermonkey, Greasemonkey, Etc...). Tested with Greasemonkey.

2 - Download either the .JS file or install from greasyfork.

3 - Set home lemmy instance via options page once script is loaded (and manually edit the homeInstance variable for the offsite home instance fix.

This script is all done by a complete amateur for fun. Enjoy and feel free to fork it!

Get it here: Github or GreasyFork

Please submit issues to the github for feature requests and problems: Github LemmyTools Issues

Good overview of the status of the project and upcoming challenges

Email works! I have spent hours troubleshooting this and finally found a solution. This should make the sign-up flow easier - and now I'll also get notifications when we have new sign-ups.

That solves the final real problem for this server. Let's see where we go from here!

It's an exciting time in the Lemmy world - things are going fast! Communities are popping up so quickly. Let's collect interesting ones here.

Popular communities

Start by checking the communities list on the bigger servers:

• Sopuli.xyz
• Beehaw.org
• Lemmy.ml
• Lemmy.world
• Wayfarers' Haven

Search

• Lemmy Community Browser
• Lemmyverse community browser
• https://sub.rehab/ - mapping subreddits to the Fediverse

New communities

There are communities dedicated to announcing new communities:

• [email protected]
• [email protected]

I'm no systems admin - but I've managed to get a Lemmy instance up and running. Talk about jumping in the deep end!

At this point, everything is up and running except for email - while I'd like this working for notifications and for password resets, it's not a dealbreaker.

I've turned on the option for everyone to create communities. I figure this will be a more interesting and vibrant place as we start to grow if people can make it their own.

If you have questions or comments, please do let me know!

Just testing :)