I self-hosted an instance a when I got here a few days ago. The server costs me the same whether I use it or not, so I’d like to let as many people sign up as I can. I had a few people sign up already before join-lemmy.org was changed to require 5 monthly active users, but now my instance isn’t shown there because it’s below the limit.

Any idea on how to attract a dozen or so users so that I can show up on the main join-lemmy page again?

  • PriorProject@lemmy.world
    8·
    2 years ago

    Some random ideas:

    • Post it here. Presumably it’s lemmy.villa-straylight.social?
    • Search for Lemmy posts about picking an instance. These are readable from the public internet without a Lemmy account, you just can’t vote/comment without an account. It may feel silly to post on Lemmy about getting a Lemmy account, but it can be useful because you don’t strictly need a Lemmy account to read those posts.
    • Post it on other apps/systems where you see people talking/asking about Lemmy.
    • Fake your user numbers. Create test1 through test5 accounts on your server to bump your numbers above the join-lemmy.org threshold. It seems to me that the purpose of that threshold is to filter out personal/private instances. If you’re serious about being an admin of a bigger instance and know what that entails… just make the accounts yourself to get above the threshold. You can always delete them later, but also a handful of test accounts with “regular” permissions are likely to be handy as an admin.
    • Wintermute@lemmy.villa-straylight.socialOP
      4·
      2 years ago

      Post it here. Presumably it’s lemmy.villa-straylight.social?

      :D That’s sort of what this post is. I figured most people interested in lemmy would probably be able to figure it out, but yes you got it.

      Fake your user numbers

      I kind of consider that too. You do actually have to do some basic stuff to show up on the list in addition to the user requirement, so I don’t actually think it is about filtering out private instances, but maybe you’re right. I can’t actually figure out what constitutes an active monthly user though. I did make a (legitimate non-spam) comment on a post in another instance from my alt account and that doesn’t seem to be enough.