tl;dr the Fediverse is not great at UX of the cross-instance stuff, yet.

There's a browser extension to make cross-instance user following simpler on Mastodon (Graze); that means you can just click to follow a user from your home instance, on any Mastodon instance. I think the same concept could be modified to apply to subscribing to Lemmy communities between instances.

I think this is more of a general Lemmy issue than something specific to Lemmy.world, but I agree with your point that this should be easier!

I also found this that someone is devving for kbin that was based on mastodon code previously, seems it could be suitable for lemmy, or with some small changes. https://github.com/driccio98/kbin-link

Okay so I just forked one to make it suitable for lemmy, I've submitted it to firefox and chrome to be included in their extension stores but in the meantime you can build it and load it manually.

Here's the repo if anyone is interested. Once it's uploaded onto either store I'll put a note out in this post and also probably make a new post to give people a heads up :)

https://github.com/FackJox/lemmy-link

Here is a little javascript that helps with adding remote subs to yours. It has it quirks, (namely always have to refresh the community page once before the button shows up) but it stops you from having to manually type a community into your instance. Also, the search page of your home instance seems more reliable with this method.

It's basic but it has allowed me to add a communities a bit easier. I would like to expand on it.

Yeah I made an account on feddit.uk too, but I made this one first and it's taking a long time to build up subscriptions at the moment. Once it becomes easier to find and subscribe to communities I'll start building up my feddit.uk one too.

I use the jerboa app as I'm a phone user, and overall it's really good except for the community visibility and some other small issues. I'm constantly switching between the app and my browser to go through that process if I only see a link to a new community rather than a post I can just click through on. I'm sure in time these things will be addressed tho

Sounds like a good excuse to learn how to program.