## What is Lemmy? Lemmy is a self-hosted social link aggregation and discussion platform. It is completely free and open, and not controlled by any company. This means that there is no advertising, tracking, or secret algorithms. Content is organized into communities, so it is easy to subscribe to topics that you are interested in, and ignore others. Voting is used to bring the most interesting items to the top. ## Major Changes This release includes major improvements to performance, specifically optimizations of database queries. Special thanks to @phiresky, @ruud, @sunaurus and many others for investigating these. Additionally this version includes a fix for another cross-site scripting vulnerability. For these reasons instance admins should upgrade as soon as possible. As promised, captchas are supported again. And as usual there are countless bug fixes and minor improvements, many of them contributed by community members. ## Upgrade instructions Follow the upgrade instructions for [ansible](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ansible#upgrading) or [docker](https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/install_docker.html#updating). If you need help with the upgrade, you can ask in our [support forum](https://lemmy.ml/c/lemmy_support) or on the [Matrix Chat](https://matrix.to/#/#lemmy-admin-support-topics:discuss.online). ## Support development We (@dessalines and @nutomic) have been working full-time on Lemmy for almost three years. This is largely thanks to support from [NLnet foundation](https://nlnet.nl/). If you like using Lemmy, and want to make sure that we will always be available to work full time building it, consider [donating to support its development](https://join-lemmy.org/donate). No one likes recurring donations, but they've proven to be the only way that open-source software like Lemmy can stay independent and alive.

## What is Lemmy? Lemmy is a self-hosted social link aggregation and discussion platform. It is completely free and open, and not controlled by any company. This means that there is no advertising, tracking, or secret algorithms. Content is organized into communities, so it is easy to subscribe to topics that you are interested in, and ignore others. Voting is used to bring the most interesting items to the top. ## Major Changes ### HTTP API instead of Websocket Until now Lemmy-UI used websocket for all API requests. This has [many disadvantages](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2841#issuecomment-1535469357), like making the code harder to maintain, and causing live updates to the site which many users dislike. Most importantly, it requires keeping a connection open between server and client at all times, which causes increased load and makes scaling difficult. That's why we decided to rip out websocket entirely, and switch to HTTP instead. This change was made much more urgent by the sudden influx of new users. [@CannotSleep420](https://lemmygrad.ml/u/CannotSleep420) and [@dessalines](https://lemmy.ml/u/dessalines) have been working hard for the past weeks to implement this change in lemmy-ui. HTTP on its own is already more lightweight than websocket. Additionally it also allows for caching of server responses which can decrease load on the database. Here is an [experimental nginx config](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ansible/pull/75) which enables response caching. Note that Lemmy doesn't send any cache-control headers yet, so there is a chance that private data gets cached and served to other users. Test carefully and use at your own risk. ### Two-Factor Authentication New support for two-factor authentication. Use an app like [andOTP](https://f-droid.org/es/packages/org.shadowice.flocke.andotp/) or [Authenticator Pro]( https://f-droid.org/packages/me.jmh.authenticatorpro/) to store a secret for your account. This secret needs to be entered every time you login. It ensures that an attacker can't access your account with the password alone. ### Custom Emojis Instance admins can add different images as emojis which can be referenced by users when posting. ### Other changes #### Progressive Web App Lemmy's web client can now be installed on browsers that support PWAs, both on desktop and mobile. It will use an instance's icon and name for the app if they are set, making it look like a given instance is an app. **Note for desktop Firefox users**: the desktop version of Firefox does not have built in support for PWAs. If you would like to use a Lemmy instance as a PWA, use [use this extension](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-firefox/). #### Error Pages Lemmy's web client now has error pages that include resources to use if the problem persists. This should be much less jarring for users than displaying a white screen with the text "404 *error message here*". #### Route Changes Pages that took arguments in the route now take query parameters instead. For example, a link to lemmy.ml's home page with a few options used to look like this: ``` https://lemmy.ml/home/data_type/Post/listing_type/All/sort/Active/page/1 ``` The new route would look like this: ``` https://lemmy.ml?listingType=All ``` Note that you now only have to specify parameters you want instead of all of them. #### Searchable select redesign The searchable selects, such as those used on the search page, have a new look and feel. No more inexplicable green selects when using the lightly themes! #### Share button Posts on the web client now have a share button on supported browsers. This can be used to share posts to other applications quickly and easily. #### Lemmy-UI Overall look and feel lemmy-ui is now upgraded to bootstrap 5, and every component is now much cleaner. Special thanks to [sleepless](https://github.com/SleeplessOne1917), [alectrocute](https://github.com/alectrocute), [jsit](https://github.com/jsit), and many others for their great work on improving and re-organizing lemmy-ui. #### Database optimizations Special thanks to [johanndt](https://github.com/johanndt), for suggesting improvements to Lemmy's database queries. Some of these suggestions have already been implemented, and more are on the way. Query speed is Lemmy's main performance bottleneck, so we really appreciate any help database experts can provide. #### Captchas Captchas are not available in this version, as they need to be reimplemented in a different way. They will be back in 0.18.1, so wait with upgrading if you rely on them. ## Upgrade instructions Follow the upgrade instructions for [ansible](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ansible#upgrading) or [docker](https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/install_docker.html#updating). If you need help with the upgrade, you can ask in our [support forum](https://lemmy.ml/c/lemmy_support) or on the [Matrix Chat](https://matrix.to/#/!OwmdVYiZSXrXbtCNLw:matrix.org). ## Support development We (@dessalines and @nutomic) have been working full-time on Lemmy for almost three years. This is largely thanks to support from [NLnet foundation](https://nlnet.nl/). If you like using Lemmy, and want to make sure that we will always be available to work full time building it, consider [donating to support its development](https://join-lemmy.org/donate). No one likes recurring donations, but they've proven to be the only way that open-source software like Lemmy can stay independent and alive.

The new major version of Lemmy is now ready, and we need your help with testing. Most importantly it uses HTTP for API requests now, which is much more efficient than websocket. Additionally Two-factor-auth is supported. There are also countless other improvements and bug fixes. You can register on any of the following servers to start testing, no approval required. You can post to your hearts content to find out if anything is broken. The test instances only federate with each other to avoid affecting production instances with spam. - [Enterprise](https://enterprise.lemmy.ml/) - [Voyager](https://voyager.lemmy.ml/) - [DS](https://ds9.lemmy.ml/) If you encounter any bugs that aren't present in 0.17, open an issue and mention in the title that it happened with a release candicate version. Over the next days we will publish new RC versions to fix bugs that will invariably pop up. Instance admins can try the new version by using Docker images `dessalines/lemmy-ui:0.18.0-rc.2` and `dessalines/lemmy:0.18.0-rc.1`. Make sure that working backups are in place. For production instances its better to wait at least some days for the major issues to be fixed.

Its been a hectic week everyone, so I apologize that I haven't been as responsive as usual. We realized that we could either spend *all our day* answering questions, or coding to make lemmy better, so we're prioritizing the latter. Reddit caught us right in the middle of one of our larger performance improvements, so I apologize for the instability of instances like this one. But I'm confident that lemmy will improve, especially due to all the new contributors helping out with performance, security fixes, and stability. Please use our the [issue trackers for the various lemmy projects](https://github.com/lemmynet) to report issues, otherwise they will likely get lost. # Call for testers - You can help us test patch releases like this one at https://enterprise.lemmy.ml - We're readying the `0.18.0` release soon, you can help us test at https://voyager.lemmy.ml , and https://ds9.lemmy.ml - App devs should use voyager.lemmy.ml to test and prepare for `0.18.0`, which should come in the next few weeks. The API changes and new types can be seen [here](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-js-client/compare/release/v0.17...main). - `0.18.0` should give servers a big performance boost by removing websockets and switching entirely to HTTP. It also will add a lot of features like 2fa / TOTP.

Mostly bugfixes. [Changelog](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/main/RELEASES.md#lemmy-v0172-release-2023-02-22)

sorry guys, HeapOverflow is down right now, because freenom decided to disappear my domain registration... I'll try and recover it or migrate to a more reliable TLD, but It'll take some time =/ This should also serve as a warning against using sketchy TLDs

Its been a long time coming 🥳 . Excerpt from the link: ## Major Changes ### Language Tags Content can now be tagged to indicate the language it is written in. These tags can be used to filter content, so that you only see posts in languages which you actually understand. Instances and communities can also specify which languages are allowed, and prevent posting in other languages. In the future this will also allow for integrated translation tools. ### Comment trees Lemmy has changed the way it stores comments, in order to be able to properly limit the comments shown to a maximum depth. Included are proper comment links (`/comment/id`), where you can see its children, a count of its hidden children, and a _context_ button to view its parents, or the post. ### Featured posts Admins and mods can now "feature" (this used to be called "sticky" ala reddit) posts to the top of either a community, or the top of the front page. This makes possible announcement and bulletin-type posts. Special thanks to @makotech for adding this feature. ### Federation Lemmy users can now be followed. Just visit a user profile from another platform like Mastodon, and click the follow button, then you will receive new posts and comments in the timeline. Votes are now federated as private. This prevents other platforms from showing who voted on a given post, and it also means that Lemmy now counts votes from Mastodon. This release also improves compatibility with Pleroma. If you previously had trouble interacting between Pleroma and Lemmy, give it another try. We've extracted the main federation logic into its own library, [activitypub-federation-rust](https://github.com/LemmyNet/activitypub-federation-rust). It is open source and can be used by other projects to implement Activitypub federation, without having to reinvent the wheel. The library helps with handling HTTP signatures, sending and receiving activities, fetching remote objects and more. ### Other changes - Admins can now purge content and pictures from the database. - Mods can _distinguish_ a comment, "stickying" it to the top of a post. Useful for mod messages and announcements. - Number of new / unread comments are now shown for each post. - Lemmy now automatically embeds videos from Peertube, Youtube and other sites which provide an embed link via Opengraph attribute. - You can give your site "taglines", short markdown messages, which are shown at the top of your front page. Thanks to @makotech for adding this. - You can now report private messages. - Most settings have been moved from the config file into the database. This means they can be updated much easier, and apply immediately without a restart. - When setting up a new Lemmy instance, it doesn't create a default community anymore. Instead this needs to be done manually. - Admins can choose to receive emails for new registration applications. - An upgrade of diesel to v2.0, our rust -> postgres layer.

We're getting ready to release a new version of Lemmy, which will require a database upgrade, so we'll have a few hours of downtime.

Now it's c/popmemes