this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2026
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Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

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[Help Design Lemmy] Joinlemmy website and New User Onboarding (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by nutomic@lemmy.ml to c/lemmy@lemmy.ml
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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:

Edit: Here is a draft for some changes to the frontpage: https://github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-site/pull/524

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[–] otter@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I appreciate that you are gathering community feedback!

Right now it feels like the website is geared towards the style and content that technical users appreciate. I agree with the other comments that it would be nice to simplify the website down. Technical users are willing to explore for more information while the average user taking a quick look will likely leave.

Taking inspiration from other Fediverse platforms, my favourite landing pages are from Peertube and Mastodon:

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?

This is likely a biased opinion, but could you add 'region' as a field, or 'regional' as a topic? For our instance, I think that's how a lot of people are choosing to make an account with us given recent events. It also helps the user find an instance that is nearby (for lower latency), and within a jurisdiction that they are familiar with / can have an influence over through voting or other means. pangora.social seems to be down right now, but I recall them having a nice way of organizing that

Another biased opinion, I agree that it's better to have large instances near the top since they're more likely to be up / fixed quickly / on top of moderation. You could include a note saying that larger instances are near the top because of XYZ, and that people can always make more accounts down the road if you change your mind. That way there's less pressure to pick the "correct" instance.

And the list of apps, what can be done here? For one thing the data is rarely updated, so we would appreciate pull requests.

Could you potentially collaborate with https://lemmyapps.com/ ? It would be easier for users to submit updates to one place (whether it is a PR to you or an update on that site)

If I were to try and critique the site in excessive detail, from top to bottom:

  • Could you make the logo have a rectangular / circle background around it? Right now edges look odd over the dark background. The hover effect looks nicer, maybe with different colors
  • In the header: News, Docs, & Contact can be collapsed into a dropdown under 'About' or something similar, since those are pages that someone would go searching for
  • Instead of 'Join a server', 'Donate' and 'See all servers', it might be better to have one massive "Join a Server" button/card on the front page that leads to the instance list page.
    • Join a serve and See all servers are very similar for a user that's not familiar with how this all works, and they end up in the same place. So instead of a popup, could you have it as a responsive widget on the instance's page? That way users can quickly figure out how the instances are tagged
    • Since the donate button is already in the header, it might be better to have a large section on donations further down the page.
  • The paragraph is a large block of text. I'd prefer something closer to what Peertube did
  • The screenshots could be larger and more prominent
  • The images give off 'AI generated' vibes, even if that wasn't their origin. Could you have large cards with simple icons, similar to the 3 header cards on our site: https://fedecan.ca/en/
  • I like the 'Create your own discussion platform' card's format. It's a bit hard to read, but otherwise nice
  • The 'more features' section could be simplified down to the important points, and maybe even combined with what is being done with the screenshots area

On the servers page:

  • The community explorer and fediverse observer are external sites, but they look like widgets right now.
  • Is every instance under one topic, or would it be possible to let the user select multiple and have instances appear and disappear from the list live?
  • I like Pixelfed's join page since I can quickly narrow down an instance based on what's important to me: https://pixelfed.org/servers
[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

Right now it feels like the website is geared towards the style and content that technical users appreciate. I agree with the other comments that it would be nice to simplify the website down. Technical users are willing to explore for more information while the average user taking a quick look will likely leave.

Taking inspiration from other Fediverse platforms, my favourite landing pages are from Peertube and Mastodon:

https://joinmastodon.org/
https://joinpeertube.org/
https://pixelfed.org/how-to-join

Makes sense, this all seems similar to the frontpage changes I drafted today (added screenshot to the OP just now).

This is likely a biased opinion, but could you add ‘region’ as a field, or ‘regional’ as a topic? For our instance, I think that’s how a lot of people are choosing to make an account with us given recent events. It also helps the user find an instance that is nearby (for lower latency), and within a jurisdiction that they are familiar with / can have an influence over through voting or other means. pangora.social seems to be down right now, but I recall them having a nice way of organizing that

This also makes a lot of sense, showing regional instances can make the choice much easier. Opened issue: https://github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-site/issues/527

Another biased opinion, I agree that it’s better to have large instances near the top since they’re more likely to be up / fixed quickly / on top of moderation. You could include a note saying that larger instances are near the top because of XYZ, and that people can always make more accounts down the road if you change your mind. That way there’s less pressure to pick the “correct” instance.

This is already the case since yesterday, there is a semirandom sort which always shows larger instances near the top and smaller ones further down.

Could you potentially collaborate with https://lemmyapps.com/ ? It would be easier for users to submit updates to one place (whether it is a PR to you or an update on that site)

Very good idea, also opened an issue: https://github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-site/issues/526

Could you make the logo have a rectangular / circle background around it? Right now edges look odd over the dark background. The hover effect looks nicer, maybe with different colors

You mean the Lemmy logo in the top left? It seems the thin lines are not rendered well at this small scale. What colors would you use?

In the header: News, Docs, & Contact can be collapsed into a dropdown under ‘About’ or something similar, since those are pages that someone would go searching for

Maybe, but there are so few items that it seems fine like this.

Instead of ‘Join a server’, ‘Donate’ and ‘See all servers’, it might be better to have one massive “Join a Server” button/card on the front page that leads to the instance list page.

Again see https://github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-site/pull/524

The paragraph is a large block of text. I’d prefer something closer to what Peertube did

With Peertube they have a good designer on board to make these graphics. We are all programmers, so its very difficult to make a good design without more concrete suggestions.

The images give off ‘AI generated’ vibes, even if that wasn’t their origin. Could you have large cards with simple icons, similar to the 3 header cards on our site: https://fedecan.ca/en/

The images are just to avoid having too much text, a bit similar to the Peertube site. I already mentioned it in another comment, if you know any better images to put there I would be happy to replace them. The icons on your site are very small, so it would still show a lot of text.

I like the ‘Create your own discussion platform’ card’s format. It’s a bit hard to read, but otherwise nice

True the texts should be a bit bigger. https://github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-site/issues/528

The ‘more features’ section could be simplified down to the important points, and maybe even combined with what is being done with the screenshots area

True these havent been updated in a long time. Any specific features that you would emphasize?

Is every instance under one topic, or would it be possible to let the user select multiple and have instances appear and disappear from the list live?

Instances can have multiple topics, in fact you can make a PR to this file to update it yourself.

I like Pixelfed’s join page since I can quickly narrow down an instance based on what’s important to me: https://pixelfed.org/servers

That does look good, though it also has some problems. Most instances are uncategorized, and country selection is by server IP so Germany also has pixelshot.it listed. Manually specifying countries would be more reliable (but also more effort).