Lemmy & Pangora Instance Selector

Submitted ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Ategon@programming.dev⁩ to ⁨fediverse@lemmy.world⁩

https://programming.dev/pictrs/image/8ef831b7-fcc2-40b3-b853-f3cc7bb27b73.png

Hey everyone! I recently finished up an instance selector similar to join-lemmy. There are a couple issues with join-lemmy with it sending the majority of people to the general purpose instances instead of growing the niche instances, as well as giving people way too many options at once which can turn into choice paralysis.

The selector will be the default when people visit the pangora site and people can also use it to select lemmy instances instead of using join-lemmy.

How it works:

Users are presented with 10 main categories (technology, sports, art, etc.). They can choose one which will be the category of content they primarily look at
If a category has no subcategories they will then be sent to a random instance for that category (e.g. if they choose sports they get sent to fanaticus)
Else if a category has subcategories they are then shown those to pick from (e.g. technology when selected will show programming, radio, etc.) (and when selected repeat previous step)

I added almost every active instance to the site so feel free to use it to check out some other instances for various topics

Hope you enjoy :)

site: pangora.social/join
source code: github.com/PangoraWeb/pangora.social

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Comments

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SnokenKeekaGuard@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I just played with the background of the website homepage for 10 mins, send help

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- peyotecosmico@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’m glad I’m not the only one
  
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- starman@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s probably using particles.js
  
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  - Ategon@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    For the background I used tsParticles for the particles, and the gradient behind that uses framer motion to change colors by moving an image back and forth
    
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otter@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
This looks great, and would be a nice place to redirect people for topic based instances. I was just looking for an updated list the other day.

How do you pick which ones to keep and which ones to skip? For example, there are a few film/TV/music instances and there will probably be more soon.

Feedback:

add some more information on who owns/runs the instances, and maybe show the recommended instance instead of redirecting to it without warning. This page could include the details on the instance, and you could still “highly recommend” one instance

move the regional instances out from under “other”. This was important to me as a lot of the relevant communities to me are regional (I follow what’s happening in my city, province, country, school, etc.). I have interests in FOSS, science, etc., but I wouldn’t pick my instance for any one of those.

It could also help with latency if users are located in one region, and users would have more control over things like where the data is stored or how the non profit is set up. I like knowing that my instance is setting up a non-profit in my country, and that it is following our local privacy / security laws.
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- Ategon@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Instances have been added if they have a decent amount of activity and dont break the programming.dev rules (no hate speech, no illegal content, no lolicon). The ones currently here are just basically ones that I know exist but other ones can get added if someone sends me links to them or an issue gets opened on the repository
  
  Sure I could adapt it a bit to do that. I can show info on one and then add in a refresh button to get a new instance in that category or something similar.
  
  And sure I can move regional into their own category
  
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  - otter@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Sounds great, looking forward to seeing how this develops :)
    
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- cacheson@kbin.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  for topic based instances. I was just looking for an updated list the other day.
  
  I've got a pretty good list here: https://kbin.social/m/specialized_instances/t/186667/Big-list-of-specialized-instances
  
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JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Wow, that GUI is beautiful. And the site works really well, too!

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666@normalcity.life ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Your website needs JS to work and has unnecessary bloat.

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- Ategon@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Lemmy itself needs JS to work, wouldnt make sense to limit myself to not using it when the sites im sending people to dont have that restriction. Whats the bloat youre talking about, I can look at it
  
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Die4Ever@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
what would be even cooler is if it automatically subscribed you to communities based on the answers you gave

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- Ategon@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Couple things I think would have to be added for this to work. One would be tagging communities based on the content in them so these subscribe lists dont have to be constantly manually updated and instead can be set on a community level. Then would be handling for taking in the category from the url and saving that so its used later when they sign up (I dont think base lemmy would want to integrate behaviour from the pangora site but it could be integrated into instances running pangora)
  
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  - Die4Ever@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    One would be tagging communities based on the content in them so these subscribe lists dont have to be constantly manually updated and instead can be set on a community level.
    
    eh instances don’t have this either and yet you associate instances with these tags, I think a hardcoded list is fine and it doesn’t need to be anywhere near complete or perfectly up to date, just a starting point or suggestions
    
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Bebo@literature.cafe ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
This is great. I was checking through the categories, and I had no idea there’s a science instance. I came to know about my present instance from reading posts here. Finding interest related instances has been so difficult.

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willya@lemmyf.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Curious where my instance lands.

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- Ategon@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  lemmyf isnt currently listed since its one of the instances that I had no idea existed. Would be under nsfw though
  
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rustyriffs@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Is there a way to integrate this into a frontend? I use alexandrite, because I find the default UI attrocious

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- Ategon@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’ve been working on a new frontend (pangora-ui) thats a similar style in terms of design. Theres some progress over in !pangora@programming.dev. These features can’t be put into that though since the frontend is instance specific (lemmy-ui equivalent) and this is for all instances (join-lemmy equivalent)
  
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  - rustyriffs@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That’s pretty exciting. Will it be able to be used on desktop? Also, does it open posts/links internally without leaving the main page? (That is my main reason for using Alexandrite, because it’s the only replacement I’ve found that has that behavior). If the UI is like that I would definitely be willing to check it out.
    
    Also will it have any features that Alexandrite doesn’t?
    
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Fizz@lemmy.nz ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Pornlemmy.com returns a server error.

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Tibert@compuverse.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
So when does the random instance is chosen? When the website is loaded? When the user clicks on a category?

Maybe currently there aren’t enough instances categorised on the website to get enough randomness.

Is there, or would there be, a weight in the randomness in order to chose closer instances based on the user’s location?

For example sh.itjust.works is an instance based in Canada. When the reddit exodus happened. That instance was slow due to the distance. While others closer to the western europe were faster because they where closer to me.

Tho rn, it’s about the same. So not sure.

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- Ategon@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Instance is chosen when theres no subcategories for what the user selected
  
  As an example of that when someone first goes to the site they get shown the 10 main categories. If they select technology they are then shown the technology subcategories (programming, android, radio, general). if they select general technology that has no subcategories so they are randomly sent to one of the three general technology instances (discuss.tchncs.de, lemmy.sdf.org, or infosec.pub)
  
  A lot of the categories only have one site it sends to but thats fine for now since it still is distributing people to the different sites based on categories
  
  Im not looking at location data at all but in the everything/other category theres countries that can be selected to send to country instances
  
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  - Tibert@compuverse.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Hmm, ok. I see. When clicking on the last button in a category tree, it chooses randomly an instance.
    
    Tho for that specific category, I cannot access lemmy.sdf.org. Why? I don’t know, maybe broken or regional block?
    
    If regional block, that is an argument to warts looking at user location. Tho not sure if it would be useful for anything else.
    
    It would also be interesting to categorize more instances. Maybe even put smaller ones to distribute the load. Tho sometimes the smaller ones may not be well prepared for a lot of users. And at the same time the local feed may not be the most active. Tho the all feed may be interesting for new users.
    
    The instance where I am, compuverse.uk is a general tech/computer instance, but had issues with storage for example.
    
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Lemmy &amp; Pangora Instance Selector

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Lemmy & Pangora Instance Selector