Demigodrick

joined 1 year ago
MODERATOR OF
[–] Demigodrick 8 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I've quite enjoyed/hated myself for playing Pedantle

[–] Demigodrick 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Do you convert uploads to webp via Pictrs? That can help to keep the file sizes down :)

Edit: also, the version of pictrs you're on can help - later versions do some tidying up IIRC.

[–] Demigodrick 8 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I appreciate the support, thank you!

 

Hello and welcome to the November 2024 edition of the Lemmy.zip Server Update!

Long time readers will know the format by now, but please have a good read and give this an upvote if you enjoy it :)


Communities

Take a look at these new communities. If you enjoy them, give them a subscribe :)

As I said last time, I was going to start clearing up old and unused communities. I've reviewed most of the communities and mods have been very good at coming back to me, so thank you. We've managed to reduce the list of communities now, which should make it a bit easier for those looking to host communities here or those that are new to Lemmy in general.


Server Update

We've had a couple of maintenance periods for the usual front end and back end updates, but I'm glad to report that the server has been mostly stable for a good few months now. I made some little tweaks to the database based on some feedback around shared memory running out (thank you @BrikoX!) otherwise our uptime in 2024 (so far, let's not jinx it) has been 99.8946% (including maintenance downtimes, i.e. when we moved server).

I have also recently taken the time to update the Terms of Service - nothing has changed materially, just an update to wording around GDPR and age limits/NSFW content.

Finally, my plan is to try and complete work on our "ban notifier" - we don't issue many bans, but there is no communication from lemmy if we do this. So a banned person has no idea why or for how long. Using webhooks we can share this information with the user and give them an appeals channel, I just need to put the finishing touches on it.


Interaction reminder (help support the instance!)

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

I am sure that long term readers are bored of reading this now, but it is really is true that the easiest way you can support Lemmy.zip is to actively engage with content here: upvoting content you enjoy, sharing your thoughts through posts and comments, sparking meaningful discussions, or even creating new communities that resonate with your interests.

It’s natural to see fluctuations in user activity over time, and we’ve seen this over the wider lemmy-verse for some time now. However, if you’ve found a home here and love this space, now is the perfect opportunity to help us thrive.

If you want to support us in a different way than financially, then actively interacting with the instance helps us out loads.

If you've gone to the trouble of creating an account, then come and be part of the Fediverse! Please don't be a lurker! :)


Donations

Lemmy.zip only continues to exist because of the generous donations of its users. The operating cost of Lemmy.zip is over 50 euros a month ($54, £43) and is mostly funded by the community!

We keep all the details around donations on our OpenCollective page, with full transparency around income and expenditure.

If you're enjoying Lemmy.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 site and keeping the virtual lights on.

We've also put up a link to our Ko-Fi page where you can donate via paypal instead of using a card. All Ko-Fi donations will be totalled up and added to OpenCollective each month for transparency. I've added a link in the sidebar, but you can also click the image below to go there:

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!


It's Graph Time!

As I missed the update for last month, these graphs are over 60 days instead of the usual 30 days.

CPU:

RAM: (The drops here coincide with the server/database container being restarted.)

Storage: (Yeah that one is pretty boring)

Here are things right now as I type this:

Image storage:

And now for Cloudflare stats (which are back to 30 days)

Requests:

Bandwidth:

Unique visitors:

Region traffic:

(as a reminder, Lemmy.world and lemm.ee are hosted in Finland - as is Lemmy.zip! - which is why we see so much traffic from there.)

Anyway, that's it for now.

As always, if there is anything you'd like me to add to these going forward, let me know! Otherwise I hope everyone has nice November and I'll see you again in December :)

Cheers,

Demigodrick

[–] Demigodrick 2 points 4 days ago

Glad I wasn't the only one who misread that!

[–] Demigodrick 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Top mod got banned from lemmy.zip, which had the consequence of banning their community.

I've had a look and restored it for now, however the users also has to be unbanned for that - if they continue with their posts that got them banned originally (which have all been deleted from lemmy.zip) then we'll have to look for a workaround.

[–] Demigodrick 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah its a good shout - its just a bit expensive for what we can afford vs donations. Its not my area of expertise by a long shot, but I'd love to get there. Lemmy already supports this, just a case of getting the infrastructure to do it.

36
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by Demigodrick to c/announcements
 

Time for a quick bit of maintenance, including a server reboot. During the reboot, you may not be able to connect to Lemmy.zip, which shouldn't last for more than a couple of minutes.

If there are any surprises and the maintenance needs to be extended, I'll update status.lemmy.zip and the matrix chat.

 

They're back baby!

[–] Demigodrick 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hey! Have you subscribed to the community? When i look, it appears there are no lemmy.zip subscribers there, and Lemmy won't share any updates in communities with no subscribers, so I'd say make sure you hit the subscribe button and then check again a little while later.

[–] Demigodrick 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

There are additional costs that aren't factored in (although they're not specifically lemmy, and I pay for them myself rather than use donations) such as a very cheap vps for our status.lemmy.zip page and i got a 3 year deal for an external email provider for less than some email providers wanted a month.

Our server is the same one feddit.uk use (a hetzner auction server) although lemmy.zips I think was a touch more expensive per month. But it's got a lot of room for growth.

Also we now host all our backups offside too, which adds a little on top. I'll probably cover this in the next server update.

[–] Demigodrick 4 points 2 months ago

No, not them visiting their own instance for example.

What I think this is made up of is the activities created by users on other instances, i.e. if someone makes a comment on their own instance but we're federated with it, we get a copy of that activity and that counts towards this traffic.

[–] Demigodrick 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I don't know what's happening in Hong Kong, but lemmy.world and lemm.ee and some others are hosted in Finland (as is Lemmy.zip now!) because of Hetzner, so that's where we get most of our traffic from

[–] Demigodrick 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I hope Lemmy.zip is a good home for the community :)

[–] Demigodrick 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I did! 😅 And thank you :)

 

Hi All!

Welcome to another monthly Lemmy.zip server update!

I have been increasingly busy in "real life" so haven't had much time to dedicate to Lemmy.zip recently (I got married!) however things are calming down now and I'm able to spend a bit more time keeping an eye on things. I had a few messages/requests and I think I've responded to them all, but let me know if I've missed anything.


Communities

Take a look at these new communities. If you enjoy them, give them a subscribe :)

There are also some existing communities that are looking for mods. Fancy trying out being a mod with a pre-existing community? Now is your chance!

PS - I finally have some time to start clearing up old/unused communities - I will be PM'ing mods soon!


Server Updates

It's been a little while since my last update so I'll go over some of the things that have happened or are happening:

We had a great Canvas event again, with the Lemmy.zip logo once again being lovingly recreated, and a few of our community's logos popping up, including the amazing SquaredCircle logo too!

You can see more on the completed Canvas here.

Did you know - we have a public dashboard showing all of our up to date federation/server data? You can check it out here!

Given some of the recent wider fediverse moderation issues/drama that has happened recently, I thought it might be sensible to confirm our position on moderation and how we decide what actions we take. We're not a massive instance, and we do get very few issues deriving from Lemmy.zip thankfully (I know moderators on larger instances probably have a trickier time of it), however our aim is not to interfere, silence, or in any way censor our communities, as long as the content is legal (in the UK/EU specifically, as that's where we're hosted) and it isn't going to cause harm to someone. You can see our full set of policies on our legal site - if you think something isn't clear enough or is missing, let me know and I will update/add it!

I'm also not usually one for podcasts, but I did stumble across this podcast on spotify that in the latest episode talks a bit about moderation in the wider Fediverse (more mastodon leaning, but the points I thought were interesting given the different ways servers are run). I am not one for mass block lists, we take each server as it interacts with us. Anyway if you're interested in that sort of thing, then I would recommend taking a listen - It's called DotSocial if you want to have a look on other platforms.

Finally, the Status Page has had a bit of a tidy up and now lists each frontend for clarity. I'm happy with the current set of frontends, but if you see one being used elsewhere you think we could host, let me know!


Interaction reminder (help support the instance!)

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

I am sure that long term readers are bored of reading this now, but it is really is true that the easiest way you can support Lemmy.zip is to actively engage with content here: upvoting content you enjoy, sharing your thoughts through posts and comments, sparking meaningful discussions, or even creating new communities that resonate with your interests.

It’s natural to see fluctuations in user activity over time, and we’ve seen this over the wider lemmy-verse for some time now. However, if you’ve found a home here and love this space, now is the perfect opportunity to help us thrive.

If you want to support us in a different way than financially, then actively interacting with the instance helps us out loads.

If you've gone to the trouble of creating an account, then come and be part of the Fediverse! Please don't be a lurker! :)


Donations

Lemmy.zip only continues to exist because of the generous donations of its users. The operating cost of Lemmy.zip is over 50 euros a month ($54, £43) and is mostly funded by the community!

We keep all the details around donations on our OpenCollective page, with full transparency around income and expenditure.

If you're enjoying Lemmy.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 site and keeping the virtual lights on.

We've also put up a link to our Ko-Fi page where you can donate via paypal instead of using a card. All Ko-Fi donations will be totalled up and added to OpenCollective each month for transparency. I've added a link in the sidebar, but you can also click the image below to go there:

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!


Graphs n' stats n' stuff

Pretty graph time:

CPU usage over the last 30 days:

Memory (RAM) usage over the last 30 days:

Disk space use:

Image storage:

Cloudflare overall stats:

Requests:

Bandwidth:

Unique visitors:

Top country taffic:


That's it from me this month, I'll probably also miss the next one of these too covering September as I'll be in a much hotter country than the UK at the end of the month for a holiday, but will try to play catch up when I'm back.

As always, if I've missed anything or there is something you'd like to see added to these, let me know! I'm always open to adding more to this.

Cheers,

Demigodrick

35
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by Demigodrick to c/announcements
 

Hi all,

Time for a bit of maintenance on the server. Including updating the front-ends to their latest versions.

There will be a reboot or two, but downtime should be minimal. If any issues do crop up that affect the operation of the site, you can see the detail at status.lemmy.zip.

Thanks

Demigodrick

Edit: had to delay a little bit because of unexpected work commitments 🙄

44
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by Demigodrick to c/announcements
 

Hey all,

Time for a bit of maintenance to the site, including updating all the frontends to their latest versions. There may be a small bit of downtime when the server is restarted, but shouldn't take too long.

Cheers,

Demigodrick

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