When people are told about Lemmy and look for it in a search engine, join-lemmy.org is one of the first pages that comes up. Here they should be able to find out what Lemmy is, and be able to register an account to start posting.
At the moment this still seems too complicated, so I'm looking for your suggestions to improve it:
- On the main page, is the text relevant and up to date or should anything be changed?
- How about the instance selection wizard (click "join a server" on the homepage), which lets you select topics and languages to select instances. Do the current options make sense?
- The instance list itself, is there any information missing, or potential design improvements?
- And the list of apps, what can be done here? For one thing the data is rarely updated, so we would appreciate pull requests.
- Any other suggestions you may have.
Since yesterday I already made a couple of improvements:
- Use biased random for instance list, so large instances are always near the top
- Rename Join to Sign Up in instance list
- Fix icon overflows by using inline-flex (by @dessalines)
- Add button to visit random instance (not merged yet)
Edit: Here is a draft for some changes to the frontpage:
https://github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-site/pull/524
The term Link Aggregator has got to go. Call it a forum and call it a day
Join Lemmy button is redundant. In fact I don't think it should even exist. All the buttons have got to go and people should directly see the "what are your interests" selection menu.
Donation button can be on top, but I don't think it's handy to have it at onboarding when people don't know what Lemmy is
See all servers button at the top as well
There needs to be more "general" servers. Lemmy.world was the most popular choice because people want to check out Lemmy and just click on "general". Not sure if .ml still has the commie paste prompt.
If possible let their first server be a general one without email verification so they can quickly join
Most people don't have a preference for interests, I'd make one giant button on the left saying "all" or " general" or something like that which just directly sends you to a "general" server, and one on the right which allows to select interests.
Images of Lemmy at the bottom are a bit confusing maybe? undecided on that
"All topics" and "General" is redundant
Selecting interests for personalized experience is something which should happen on an account basis imo. Reddit lets users select their interests and bases their frontpage algorithm on that. And people can change those filters if they so wish to get a different feed. That's customization on an account level, not on instance level.
Language customization should be less emphasized, or should be put in the "interests" section based on their country IP while joining. On the internet imperialist English has been considered the default language. The join-Lemmy page is English to begin with.
Its not the same, as forums dont use scores and have less focus on external links. The text already mentions forums, by removing link aggregator it would also be too short here.
That is what "Join" does, but the text is probably not clear. "See all servers" is a bit long, would "Instances" be clear enough?
There are a few like lemmy.zip, lemmy.wtf or reddthat. We could also consider showing lemmy.world again, but with the current sorting it is always shown at the top because it is so much larger than other instances. lemmy.ml still has the commie paste prompt.
From what I can see, all the general instances do require email verification.
You mean those grayscale images by the features? Those are just general placeholders to avoid having all text. There arent really any images which are relevant to show for a software project.
Maybe that can be added as a filter. For now I added an icon to instances which require email to signup (#523).
It uses the language configured in your browser. For me it shows in Spanish. We can also use browser language to filter the instance list without manual selection.
Frontpage buttons and topic selection are definitely the trickiest part. I would consider removing the topic selection, because there are some which barely narrow it down (technology, general or politics each show a few dozen instances), or shows only a few instances which dont match well. Plus the topics are not actively maintained.
I made a PR with some changes to the frontpage: https://github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-site/pull/524
I don't think link aggregator is a good term at all. If I said that to my mom she would never imagine anything like Reddit, she'd probably think of Google instead. Forum would be much better. "Discussion forum" would fix the issue with it being too short.
Or even "forum with voting and comment trees" lol IDK, I feel like anything is better than "link aggregator".
Makes sense, I created a separate post about this: https://lemmy.ml/post/41767599
Possibly. Dumping everyone at lemmy.zip is a possibility too. lemmy.wtf is is a bit too on the nose.
I would avoid using instances without "lemmy" in the name like reddthat, it was very confusing to me when I started out.
I think I agree with that, at least for now. The only topic instance with real specific activity in that list is probably blahaj for the LGBTQ.
The new front page looks much better and cleaner. Not sure about the "Apps" though, people need to create an account first so. Maybe "Instance selector"? Also I'd call it "Mobile Apps" instead, "Apps" is a bit vague.
I still plead for removing both buttons and directly showing the "instance selector" in the middle area, with the "See all instances" showing in the top bar only. Maybe slightly more prominently than the other top bar icons
link aggregator rant
The definition used by Reddit currently is also possiblethat would make Lemmy a "forum and (social) news aggregation" platform. "Link-aggregation" sounds much to vague to me, as if Lemmy is a link-scraping bot. But I've gone on that rant in the past.
One of the buttons talks about "instances" and the other one about "servers in your new design". Not sure what the difference there is
That makes sense. I went through the list and found these as reasonable defaults: https://lemmy.zip/, https://lemmy.today/, https://thelemmy.club/, https://lemmus.org/
Then it would be one of the monthly tasks for @dessalines@lemmy.ml and me to go through this list and keep it updated.
At least some of the apps let you register directly, though I dont have an overview of that. Would be good to contact the app devs about adding a registration option where it is missing. They might have the same doubts which instances to use as defaults.
It also includes web apps and desktop apps...
Which instance selector do you mean?
"News aggregator" and "Link aggregator" is very similar, either one works for me.
No difference, its just that "Instances" may not be clear to new users. Should definitely be made consistent before merging.
I disagree with this. Anything to encourage other language use is good. And for me it builds confidence to see the selection. Both because I think the community is large enough to exist in other languages and because it signals the developer's priorities. If there were good options in my preferred languages I would absolutely have joined a non-English instance instead. That's not going to exist if the UI buries the option.
With the current amount of users on Lemmy I think language specific content is still too niche and it should be nothing more than an option. The extra click certainly isn't worth it. People can always sign up for a language specific Lemmy instance later on if they so wish. They just need to get in, and get in fast with minimal friction.
Extra clicks are not a big deal. You go through the wizard once. Extra cognitive load is the problem, and it's abstracted as clicks or steps. But anyone who sees a language selector understands what is being asked of them and which language they need to pick.
Extra clicks are a huge deal. There's a reason platforms like Amazon are so focussed on minimizing the amount of clicks users have to go through to from webpage to payment.
Getting a Lemmy users to finish their registration in this case is similar to "getting a transaction done". Language selectors are a massive list of languages and a big hindrance.
Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux