Users on those instances need to search for your community then subscribe, only will then new posts/votes/comments show up. Federation is opt-in, not automatic.
This is correct; until someone on those remote instances searches (or maybe subscribes?) then the c/ultralight wonβt be federated to those remote instances. You should use a larger community as your test case, if you are trying to verify federation, or take is a sign that your (very niche?) ultralight community just hasnβt got many subscribers yet.
Aha, ok! With that in mind I searched some of the "red" status instances for communities containing "ultralight" and couldn't find !ultralight@lemmy.world; so does this mean in order for users to be able to find my community from their instances, I (or someone else) needs to register for each instance and then subscribe?
Pretty much, yeah. This is why external discovery tools (like browse.feddit.de and others) are so important and useful. Also posing to any of the new community or community announcement/discovery meta communities. Also sidebars linking to other related communities like on that other site.
Hello! I am still figuring out this federation stuff after having created the community !ultralight@lemmy.world. Iβve heard discussion about how fast lemmy.world is growing and outpacing the other instances, and some discussion how itβs important to spread users out. I wondered if I should recommend instances other than lemmy.world or perhaps even move myself. With that in mind I wanted to see what my new community looked like from other instances. I decided to sample some of the larger instances from https://lemmymap.feddit.de/ - as of 10am July 3, 2023 EDT hereβs what I see:
(See table above)
Out of the 13 instances !ultralight@lemmy.world is only really usable from 4 of them, and only up-to-date on one of them, lemmy.world. If this is representative of the state of things generally Iβm a bit concerned for the implications that it will funnel everyone onto a single instance and turn lemmy.world into a monolith.
I've also observed this issue with stuff on lemmy.ml not making it over, I assume because the servers are just too slammed. It's not exclusive to lemmy.world. (Although it does seem to be the worst with lemmy.world.)
Thank you for this! Valuable info I'm sure. I think this might be due to the newest Lemmy software version which not every instance may be updated to yet. As I understand Lemmy.world just updated only a day or two ago. Hope most instances will be green by end of week.