Lemmy now has private instances, optional registration applications, optional email verification, and temporary bans! These are described in detail below.
Special thanks to @asonix for adding tokio-console and Jaeger + opentelemetry to our dev setups, so we can better identify performance bottlenecks.
What is Lemmy?
Lemmy is similar to sites like Reddit, Lobste.rs, or Hacker News: you subscribe to communities you’re interested in, post links and discussions, then vote and comment on them. Lemmy isn’t just a reddit alternative; its a network of interconnected communities ran by different people and organizations, all combining to create a single, personalized front page of your favorite news, articles, and memes.
Major Changes
Required email verification
Admins can turn this on, and new users will need to verify their emails. Current users will not have to do this.
Registration applications
Admins can now optionally make new users fill out an application to join your server. There is a new panel in their top bar where they can approve or deny pending applications.
This works in conjunction with the require_email field. If that is also turned on, the application will only be shown after their email has been verified. The user will receive an email when they have been accepted.
Closed / Private instances
The instance settings now includes a private instance option, which if turned on, will only let logged in users view your site. Private instances was one of our first issues, and it was a large effort, so its great to finally have this completed.
Temporary Bans
When banning users from your site or community, moderators can now optionally give a number of days for the ban to last.
Allow comment replies from blocked users
It used to be that if a user blocked you, you couldn’t respond to their public posts and comments. This is now fixed. They won’t see your content, but others can.
If you’d like to support development, and make sure that we will always be available to work full time on Lemmy, consider donating to support its development. We’ve spent hundreds of hours on Lemmy, and would like to be able to add more developers to our little open-source co-op as time goes on.
Changes
API
We’ve removed a list of banned users from GetSite, added a few endpoints related to registration applications, made a few changes allowing temporary bans, site settings, made a few changes to the login response. These are non-destructive and current clients should work with this release.
lol that was actually a bit of an issue when I opened the PR. Apparently it has some accessibility issues so Dessalines is avoiding it. I’ll need to look more into how to use it while maintaining accessibility and work with Dessalines on that.
Clicking on a post and going “back” doesn’t involve any loading
Huh, I’m not sure I even realized that.
Video embeds
Definitely on the list, I’ve done a bit of research into that but it’ll need some back end changes and idk Rust (yet). I’ll need to see when other hexbear devs get up to speed on contributing to lemmy.
Expanders on the left
Do you mean clicking the thumbnail expanding the embed or post body? I already brought that over for image posts. I can get that going to for self posts as well.
Site-flair
Right now hexbear only has pronoun flairs. We’ve actually been wanting to add user defined flairs too. I’ve put a bit of thought into a generic, instance and community customizable flair system, so that’s definitely on the list.
dark mode by default!
There’s actually already an option for instance admins to pick the default theme.
lol that was actually a bit of an issue when I opened the PR. Apparently it has some accessibility issues so Dessalines is avoiding it. I’ll need to look more into how to use it while maintaining accessibility and work with Dessalines on that.
Huh, I’m not sure I even realized that.
Definitely on the list, I’ve done a bit of research into that but it’ll need some back end changes and idk Rust (yet). I’ll need to see when other hexbear devs get up to speed on contributing to lemmy.
Do you mean clicking the thumbnail expanding the embed or post body? I already brought that over for image posts. I can get that going to for self posts as well.
Right now hexbear only has pronoun flairs. We’ve actually been wanting to add user defined flairs too. I’ve put a bit of thought into a generic, instance and community customizable flair system, so that’s definitely on the list.
There’s actually already an option for instance admins to pick the default theme.
Yeah, I knew there was some kerfuffle, but I really hope we can come to a peaceful resolution.
This in combination with never opening in a new tab makes the site really clunky on bad internet =/
I meant for posts and comments
I was hoping it would be made into a generic feature where admins can set a white/blacklist regex in the config or something.