this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2026

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Lemmy.zip & Piefed.zip Server Update March 2026 (lemmy.zip)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by Demigodrick@lemmy.zip to c/home@lemmy.zip

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Ahoy hoy friends.

spoiler

We are officially in to March (you probably already knew that). Unfortunately I forgot there were only 28 days and so have had no prep time to come up with anything remotely witty as an opening paragraph, so you're stuck with whatever this sorry excuse of an opening is. Anyway, onwards!

Server Updates

This bit relates to all our services, so I'll put it at the top here!

Two big things - firstly, keep an eye out for April Fools day this year 😜 I've actually put a bit of work in this year so I'm excited.

Secondly, Hetzner who host all our servers are putting up their prices. In all fairness, this is happening across the industry as the demand for RAM soars, and Hetzner have been pretty rock solid in terms of pricing & support over the last 3 years, so I'm not too upset about it. We'll just have to keep an eye on it vs donations over the next 6 months.

After our last server update, we decided to upgrade the server to the next VPS (Virtual Private Server) tier due to the influx of new users. The cost increase at the time was minimal and gave a significant boost to performance. We now have 8 vCPUs and 16GB RAM for Piefed. If we decide to upgrade again, we'll likely swap from a shared VPS set up to a dedicated VPS which should give more consistent performance but does cost that bit more.

I'm always on the look out for Piefed.zip staff to approve new accounts and handle mod reports. If you're a regular Piefed.zip user and would like to help out, please drop me a message!

Thankfully nothing major has happened on Lemmy.zip this month. We're basically in a holding pattern of waiting for the Lemmy devs to release 1.0 so we can do the upgrade and get access to all the new goodies. Hopefully not too long to wait.

I do need to do some updates on the server and the services we run, I'll try and schedule that in the next couple of weeks.

Since enabling the cloudflare challenge across Lemmy.zip we've had no downtime or scraper incidents at all, which has been quite nice!

Please Don’t Be a Lurker!

If you’re new here - WELCOME! I hope you’re enjoying your time here :)

Just one small teeny-tiny request. The greatest gift you can give Lemmy.zip and Piefed.zip isn’t money, praise, or a signed copy of your self-published autobiography.. maybe. Its participation.

Upvote the things you like. Start a discussion, debate, or ponder about whether cereal is technically a soup. Make new communities if you don’t see one that fits your oddly specific niche obsession. (We don’t judge. Well, we try not to judge anyway.)

The fediverse naturally ebbs and flows, tides of people come and go. But if you’ve found yourself oddly attached to this strange little corner of the internet? Wonderful. Help it breathe. Help it grow. Help it be just a tiny bit weirder in the best possible way.

So if you’ve gone to the effort of clicking Sign Up and proving you’re not a robot (unless you are, in which case hello and welcome to our new AI overlords), then please, I beg of you:

Stick around. Add your voice. It really does make this place better.

Donations

Thank you to everyone who read my message and donated to the cause last month ❤️ I was a bit overwhelmed with your generiousity and kindness and it all helps to keep the virtual lights on here!

As a reminder, we can only continue to exist because of the generous donations of our users. If you too truly value your freedom, please help support it for everyone with a small donation.

Want to support us? We have a range of donation options to suit you!

Liberpay (Card, Paypal)

Liberpay is our newest donation method. You can donate with Paypal or with a card. The link is https://liberapay.com/dotzip

OpenCollective (Card)

Our classic donation option, but only supports card payments. The link is https://opencollective.com/lemmyzip

If you're enjoying Lemmy.zip or Piefed.zip, please check out the OpenCollective page, we have a selection of one-off or recurring donation options. All funds go directly to hosting the sites and keeping the virtual lights on.

Ko-Fi (Card, Paypal)

We also have our Ko-Fi page if you'd rather use this site, which also supports Paypal and Card payments.

Thank you!

We continue to have some really kind and generous donators and I can't express my thanks enough. You can see all the kind donators in the Thank You thread - you could get your name in there too! (I am a little behind with this sorry but I will update it soon!)

Sir, this is a Wendy's. Nobody wants to see your graphs.

Piefed.zip

For Piefed, we only store data for 7 days rather than 30 (because historically we had less storage space on the server) so all graphs are 7 days unless otherwise stated.

CPU:

RAM:

Current performance as of right now:

Images:

Cloudflare (these are all over 30 days):

Overview:

Requests:

Bandwidth:

Visitors:

Lemmy.zip

CPU:

RAM:

Storage space:

Current performance right now:

Images:

Cloudflare Overview:

Requests:

Bandwidth:

Visitors:

OK well that's it for now - March is an exciting month for me, not just because April fools is at the end but also because, for anyone who was around a year ago, my child turns 1 year old during this month which is absolutely nuts. Time has flown by so quickly (despite the long, long nights and sleep deprivation).

We're also coming up on Lemmy.zip's third birthday in June (Year one and Year two are both still up!) which is another awesome milestone!

Thank you, see you in a month!

Demigodrick

top 34 comments

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[–] Demigodrick@lemmy.zip 32 points 1 month ago (1 children)

PS yes those banners are way too big and no, I'm not going to fix them this month as I am just that lazy.

[–] gazby@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 month ago

OMG...the size of these banners tho! 😳

[–] other_cat@piefed.zip 17 points 1 month ago

Thank you for your hard work!

[–] moncharleskey@lemmy.zip 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Thanks for everything Demigodrick! Anything of particular interest in the coming Lemmy 1.0 update? Do you prefer Lemmy or Piefed from an administrative stand point? Take care, and happy upcoming birthday!

[–] Demigodrick@lemmy.zip 16 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I'm more comfortable with Lemmy because I've been doing it 3 times longer than piefed, built all my own custom bot stuff, and had to get comfortable with the API. The admin side of things is also way simpler in my opinion, but Piefed offers a lot more in terms of customisation, such as plugins and custom built in pages. Pros and cons both ways to be honest. Piefed is also under very rapid development vs Lemmy which is very measured and tested. Again, pros and cons either way!

I'm looking forward to both plugins and private communities in Lemmy 1.0!

[–] U7826391786239@piefed.zip 7 points 1 month ago

i'm grateful you took on the challenge of adding piefed to your workload. if i had to choose, i also would probably go with lemmy, but...options!! i'm just glad both platforms are available in .zip

thank you!

[–] OneOfNaturesMysteries@piefed.zip 2 points 1 month ago

Pf looks exciting. I was going to go with lemmy but apparently usernames cap at 20 characters.

[–] U7826391786239@piefed.zip 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

❤️ .zip

i started doing piefed more because it lets me follow people

[–] INeedMana@piefed.zip 2 points 1 month ago

Were you able to somehow follow Mastodon accounts?

[–] BiglyFlyBye@piefed.zip 10 points 1 month ago

Thank you so Much!! This is really cool!

[–] eli@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

As a sysadmin and homelabber, this is extremely interesting to me. Seeing the data and monthly bandwidth alone for Lemmy.zip seems insane to me.

Thanks for the transparency! I'm curious what your month to month costs are for each instance? And do you utilize Hetzner EU servers only?

I've been tempted to spin up my own kind of sites, but it's been hard to gauge bandwidth and data storage requirements based on projected user base estimates.

[–] Demigodrick@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 month ago

It's a little hard to give exact costs for both instances as a whole, because they share infrastructure (i.e. shared email host is one cost across both) but the server itself for Lemmy is just under 50 euros a month, plus image storage at another 15/16 USD per month (with around 2TB of images). The smaller piefed server is more in the region of 25 euros a month, with images more in the 5/10USD range. Then domain on top of that. It's not "expensive" as such, but it is time-heavy.

[–] Teal@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Appreciate the update! Nice that it was a quiet month compared to last time.

A question about Piefed and Lemmy. I have .zip accounts on both. If I go to a community (for instance, Pluribus) using PieFed I see one subscriber and a single post. If I switch and use Lemmy I see 261 subscribers and more posts.

The Pluribus community is a .zip one and this happens using a browser or Voyager app. Is there something I can do in my PieFed account to make visible what’s there when I’m logged into Lemmy?

This is a rare occurrence for me. That community is the only one that I’ve happened to notice doing this.

Thanks again for all the hard work!

[–] felsiq@piefed.zip 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If it’s a lemmy community, piefed sees it as an externally hosted community so it’ll only federate stuff once someone locally has subscribed

[–] Teal@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 month ago

Thank you.

[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

A Pluribus community you say? 👀

[–] Teal@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Here you go. :)

https://lemmy.zip/c/pluribus

[–] sh00g@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 month ago

Thank you for all your work and happy birthday to your kiddo!

[–] pseud@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Please Don’t Be a Lurker!

Made an acc recently because most other instances are too eager to defederate. Lovely place!

Question: since you are incorporated in Wales, what do you expect to do with the OSA (nevermind its extraterritoriality)? Wait for Ofcom to notice?

Another: why is Piefed using 4x less memory than Lemmy? Number of users?

[–] Demigodrick@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

In terms of the OSA, there is already detection in place for UK IP addresses to prevent them connecting to the site and instead forward them to uk.lemmy.zip - I will at some point need to do the same for Piefed. This takes the sites outside of the OSA so I dont need to comply. The data is all hosted in the EU but having the misfortune to be a UK citizen myself I need to take that extra step.

In terms of the memory, its a bit misleading because the lemmy server is by far our most powerful, so we run a bunch of other stuff on there too, including backend admin tools, Oauth, grafana, matrix etc. So memory consumption will be much higher. Lemmy i think is a bit more performant than piefed but only anedotally, I dont have the comparison to back that up.

[–] pseud@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

For what it's worth, Libera IRC network published the legal advice that they got. According to that, Lemmy.zip is probably not in scope since it is just too small, thus doesn't attract too many UK users inherently, and the UK is not a “target market”. They think that doing essentially nothing is a valid response in this case.

Of course, putting a block is also a valid response, and a louder one in some ways.

[–] Demigodrick@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 month ago

We have an extra layer of complexity with Lemmy.zip because we have NSFW images, and there is no way in lemmy for me to prevent UK users (or under 18s) from seeing that content if they sign up.

Having NSFW means I need to have "highly effective" age verification in place, regardless of size, which I am obviously not going to do (I dont believe in it for a start, but also its incredibly expensive). If I turn NSFW off, like feddit.uk have, then I could do a risk assessment and all would be well, but then we'd lose things like spoilers in post images (because that functionality doesn't exist yet) and any risque art communities etc.

I'd also have to proactively scan everything to ensure it wasn't NSFW otherwise I could potentially be in breach of the OSA - that level of monitoring for a couple of volunteers just isn't worth it unfortunately!

[–] qwerios@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 month ago

Sir, this is a Wendy’s. Nobody wants to see your graphs.

Heck no! Love the graphs. Quite insightful although the numbers are quite staggering.

Actually remembered to donate this month. Are the donations at least covering the cost?

[–] INeedMana@piefed.zip 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If you’re a regular Piefed.zip user and would like to help out, please drop me a message!

What kind of regularity do you have in mind?

[–] Demigodrick@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 month ago

Ideally someone that can check the site once or twice a day. We dont get masses of mod reports or anything like that but its just eyes on to make sure things are running smoothly!

[–] craftrabbit@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Peanut Donut Bean gurker

Okay okay, if cereal is not a soup, can it be classified as curry? Or can curry be classified as a soup? Or soup as curry?

[–] Demigodrick@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I mean, I'd argue quite happily that cereal is a soup - I had my cereal with hot milk this morning as it was cold outside, and I know a weirdo that eats soup cold. I'd argue there is no difference.

[–] craftrabbit@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago

Makes sense, I usually put some milk and choco crunchies into my Thai curry.

[–] Switorik@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The sorting algorithms are still broken from the first piefeed update. I don't know if it's instance related or not.

[–] Demigodrick@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Can you let me know a bit of detail on this? Which one(s) aren't working?

[–] Switorik@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

All of the sorting algorithms except top timeout after the initial load of posts.

Everything works if I open a browser and go to old.lemmy.zip on computer or phone. It times out on every app I've tried and on my PC. I've tried boost, thunder, sync, and jerboa. However, it does work if I'm not logged into an account.

Basically, if you have this bug you are forced to use top or open a browser and use old.lemmy.zip

[–] Demigodrick@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ah ok, when you mentioned Piefed I thought you were using a piefed account for this.

So for example does this link not work for you? https://lemmy.zip/?dataType=Post&listingType=All&sort=Active

Or is it only on page 2 for example?

[–] Switorik@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago

The first page loads fine. When you click next, it times out.

[–] testaccount372920@piefed.zip 1 points 1 month ago

Thanks for the update!

What do the monthly expenses and income typically look like? And since I like all those graphs at the end, any chance you could take that question literrally?