Friendica beginner help megathread

Hello, everyone! As we know what Zuck's original project is going through, I decided to create a post with all the resources I found online all these years I've been on this place, in a bid to help more people board. Here we go:

List of guides/presentations/quick start

• @anubis2814's excelent guides for Friendica. Available as a playlist on YouTube:
  
  or on Peertube:
  peertube.stream/w/p/4K4MWYXMEY…
  (6 videos)
• The Future of Social is Here: a Show and Tell (part 3: Friendica) by @Elena Rossini ⁂
• The Beginner’s guide to Friendica by @Tio
• When to use Friendica over Mastodon (updated) by @Greenpepper
• no less important, The Friendica Wiki also available under the help section of your instance (click on your pic and name on the top-right where you're logged in -> help)
• The @Friendica Support group for any questions or issues (yes, I intended to post this here).

All of these should be more comprehensive than this guide.

Short Q&A with the most common problems

How do I post stuff?
Easy, on your profile, click the button in the top right that looks like this:

A pop-up window will open, and you can type anything. Make sure to set the appropriate permissions by clicking the tab at the top. If you want your post to be public then choose public, if you don't, select limited/private and add the exceptions or add who can see it. Make sure you properly select these permissions, because you cannot change them later. If you format your post (see below), you can also check the preview pane to see how your post will look. This also applies for comments.

How to format my text?

Unlike Facebook, Friendica allows you to format your text, just like you'd do in a Word document. It uses BBCodes for text formatting like bold text, italic text, underlined text and many others. You can find more example on the usage of it in the Wiki or under https://your-instance-address/help/bbcode. You don't have to style your text, but you can do some nice stuff with it. You can also get suggestions for formatting by typing [ and selecting an option from the drop-down menu, or typing out your option to narrow your search. But do check the wiki, though. Generally, BBCode looks like [option]your-text-here[/option].

If there is any text where you don't want to add any tags on by accident, slide it between these tags: [noparse][/noparse].

How to upload an image (and how to add alt-text to it)
Just drag&drop it into the composing page. Simple. Easy. No frills.

Also, to note is that you can also re-use an image you previously uploaded if you go to the Browser tab in the compose window.

Finally, you can link to any image you find online, without downloading&reuploading it in the 1st place. Right-click an image, click "copy image link", then go to your post and type [img]paste-your image-link-here[/img] (of course, you paste your image link instead, between the img tags). This is generally how images are displayed via BBCode.

I personally use an external site to host my media and link it this way, whenever there is something I want on the internet for as long as possible in order to save some space on my instance. I mostly use postimages.org, but I also used

• files.catbox.moe
• imgur.com

Meta and now also Reddit like to change the URL string to the media posted on their platforms, so don't rely on these if you want your post to still stay relevant after a few days.

You can also add Alt-Text to your image if, instead, you type [img=your_image_url]Your Alt-Text here[/img]. Alt-Text is generally an image description that is displayed when the image fails to load/before loading, and is useful to visually impaired people using screen reading software which can read this out loud. The latter is the reason why it is highly recommended by many people all across the Fediverse (not just on Friendica).

How to upload a video or other media
Just like you do with an image. However, the video will be posted under Browser, and then the "Files" icon:

Select your file, and it will be posted with an tag.

However, there's currently no user facing way to delete these as yet, so feel free to upload them on any other external service and share the direct link to the audio/video if you care about this.

You can use the tags [audio]your-link-to-the-audio[/audio] and [video]your-link-to-the-video[/video] for that.

How do I make a poll/vote at polls
Polls are currently supported by a few Fediverse platforms, but not by Friendica fully, right now (you can see them, but you cannot vote on them and create them).

You can again use an external service for creating polls, such as poll-maker or Strawpoll.

Okay, but do I need to add a title?

No, you don't. I didn't add one either here. You can if you want your post to be more fancy and want to turn your profile into a more of a personal blog. Which would be cool, but it's not necessary. You do you!

How to post to a group

Groups on Friendica, as well as any other ActivityPub platform, are generally just some special accounts that automatically boost/reshare whatever post you added while tagging them. Therefore, just create a regular post and tag them with the ! or @ signs (one of these tags should suffice). The former one creates a post that is visible on the group but unlisted wherever else (i.e. in a public feed). The latter takes account of your permission settings. You will see how you can find groups somewhere below.

How to find various people

There are multiple ways; One is to use any of the established lists:

• Fedi.db's list
• Most followed Mastodon accounts by Stefan Hayden
• Fliboard federated accounts (for news organizations on Flipboard who enabled AP integration) [Google Sheet spreadsheet]
• [Public] Popular/famous/notable Mastodon accounts (also available as a website) [Google Sheet spreadsheet]
• The Friendica directory (only for people on Friendica)
• Follow @FediFollows 🎅 for suggestion

You can also go to Settings>Profile>Miscellaneous and scroll all the way down to add some tags to the profile. Then, you can also go to Contacts and choose "similar interests" in the left pane, get friend suggestions or a random profile.

Finally, you can also follow hashtags to get posts from people that also share your interests directly in your feed, and then follow them from there.

I'm posting stuff here, but how can people discover me?

Just like on Mastodon, you can enhance your posts with #hashtags. Other people who follow the same hashtags can find you and connect with you if they want.

But that's not the only way. You can also add yourself into the aforementioned Friendica Directory or to your server's one by going to Settings>Account>Security and Privacy Settings and check any of these two options:

This way, anyone can find you, depending on the public keywords that you set under Settings>Profile>Miscellaneous.

If, however you would like more privacy, you can check the following box below:

This limits the visibility of your content to only instances that are made aware of it, and people that have access to it based on your privacy settings. Unlogged users will not be allowed to find your content. E.g., open my profile in a new tab to see how this feature works: libranet.de/profile/petrescatr…

How do I find groups?

Same as with regular people. There are multiple lists:

• Friendica Directory (for groups that are on Friendica).
• Check the list of @Fedi.Tips 🎄 available here.
• Lemmyverse (For Communities on Lemmy - a decentralized Lemmy alternative - be wary of this though)
• Check out the servers of other Fediverse software like Mbin or Piefed. These are more forum-like platforms, centered around communities. Generally, each of these communities has a Fediverse address. Copy that, paste it in the search bar, and you should be able to find it. If it doesn't work the 1st time, try a few more times. If it still doesn't work, look whether the server is not on the banned list by accessing your-server-address/friendica, and/or contact your admin for clarification.

How do I use the search? Is it any useful beyond just searching for people and groups and other accounts?

Yes. Check the Wiki for more information.

Are there any mobile apps?

Yes there are. From my personal experience, Raccoon for Friendica gave me the best results. Relatica is also a great option, as well as Fedilab (the latter is more of a Mastodon client, but you can disable the display of reply in the feeds and enable BBCode - fiddle out in the settings). There are other apps for various platforms as well. If you don't find any of them fitting, you can just access your Friendica server in your browser (e.g. friendica.world, nerdica.net etc.). It's very responsive and easy to use.

I hope this Q&A covers the most common aspects of using Friendica

Other types of resources

• Bookface (server version, Stylus version) by @Kristi H. (also follow @Pygoscelis Papua for updates)

Other collections of resources about Friendica

• A webpage that I created in Google Sites. While Friendica is quite flexible and allows for text to be customized and formatted in multiple ways, I think a website should also be nice (plus I wanted to mess my head with Google sites). Feel free to share it around - sites.google.com/view/allabout… It's currently just in English, but it will also be a Romanian version and whatever version anyone would provide a translation for :)

tio

2020-11-02 15:09:26

NEW BLOG POST:

The Beginner’s guide to Friendica

Read it on my website (recommended):

tiotrom.com/2020/11/the-beginn…

Or read it here:

I wrote this blog recently about what the Fediverse is and why it is so awesome, together with how I created a monster to automate our Friendica TROM page and my personal account to post everywhere (Facebook, Twitter, TROM Live, my Live). Yesterday we had a really great TROMcast with the people behind Friendica and Mastodon, and Disroot.org. And I want to write a brief “beginner guide” to Friendica, because I love Friendica :). And the people behind the project are super friendly.

First of all, make an account to give it a try.

There are many “instances” so you can choose whichever. I personally recommend venera.social. It works great and the guy behind the project seems like a very nice human. Register and wait for approval. I know, it seems like a pain in the ass to wait for approval, but trust me on this. It is going to be a fast approval and they do that so that they keep these instances nice and clean. Your account will be approved 100%.

Tweak your account.

After you are approved simply go through your settings and set up stuff. It is a lot better than Facebook and easier to grasp and very clean. You can choose to block content based on language, words, you can choose who can see your posts and such. It is up to you how you set this up. Take it easy. No rush. You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to, and you can do any changes in time. It is your baby dear.

Start to follow people and organizations.

This is what you are there for. But how can you find them? Don’t be like a hungry bear that goes into a house and wants to eat everything it finds, and if it does not find much, it goes away. Be a nice, civilized, and sane bear and you’ll get to eat in that house very good food and not get fat. For starters you can follow us, people from TROM. Sasha, Shas, Aaron, me, Alexio and more importantly our TROM page. Then look through our contact list and add more people. Let it grow slowly and organically. In the contacts settings, you can search people based on interests (keywords). Let it grow slowly and I mean that. You may be used with Facebook and the crazy of influx of information that engulfs your entire life. This is a way for you to start as brand new and meet new people. It is like moving from New York (facebook) to a small nice village. You’ll see, life is better there ;).

The awesome part that keeps me personally there.

Friendica opens the doors to pretty much any Federated network. Say you find a Mastodon account in the wild. Copy the url to your Friendica search bar then simply follow them. Do the same for any other Federated network. Now you can interact with these people (send private messages, see their posts in your feed, comment to them, like, share, etc.).

Follow websites!

Yah! You can. Pretty much any website (since most have an RSS feed). Copy our videoneat.com url, or tromjaro.com, tiotrom.com, bigworldsmallsasha.com, trade-free.org/directory, or any other that you like, into the contacts page and just follow. You’ll get to see the posts in your feed whenever these websites post new stuff. How cool! You can also tweak the settings for each such website, individually. For example you can set up how frequently you get updates from them, if you want to get a notification when they post something new, or format how the posts should look like.

At times, if these websites support it, you can see their entire articles in you feed so no need to go to their websites. I recommend you select “fetch information and keywords” so you get to see their posts as a summary and link to the original article. And lastly, you can select to auo-reshare any of these websites’ posts on your profile if you wish. Or as your own posts.

Follow Twitter!

If you have a Twitter account, now is the time to never use twitter.com but use it through your Friendica. Go to Settings – Social Networks and click the Twitter tab. Connect to your Twitter (easy, a few seconds). Now you should choose “allow posting on twitter” and “import the remote timeline”. Why? Because now if you want to follow someone on Twitter, simply copy their twitter url, the entire thing, into the same contacts page and follow them. And you’ll see their posts in your timeline. Easy.

You can reply to these Twitter accounts from Friendica and interact with them from there. Super cool. I already follow a few Twitter accounts and works great.

Follow Facebook pages and more!

You cannot follow people/pages from Facebook in a “native” and interactive way, but there is a way you can do that when these are public. Go to our RSS-Bridge service here. Search for Facebook Bridge | Main Site. Now click “show more”. And add a Facebook page name that you want to follow as I showcase bellow. “username” is the page name.

Now click “Html”. You will be redirected to a new page where you can see the posts of that page as such.

Right click the Mrss and then Copy Link. That’s all. Now you have the RSS link of that Facebook page. Go to your contacts page and add it there. Then click “connect”. Same as adding any contacts or websites.

And that’s how you can follow Facebook pages or public profiles. Use that RSS-Bridge. You cannot comment/interact with these, but well…at least you can follow them. I suggested to Friendica-friendy developers to add the RSS-Bridge as an addon to Friendica, so that if you want to follow a user/page to be as easy as pasting the facebook URL into the “add new contact” form, and the rest is magic.

Follow the entire internet!

Follow Youtube, WordPress plugins updates, Wikipedia daily article or “did you know?”, VK pages, Vimeo, photos from Unsplash, you can even follow Twitter users and pages without an account or even follow hashtags….you can follow Telegram public groups, or when new stuff is added to the BitTorrent network (like say you want to know when a new episode from whatever documentary series you like, is available on torrents). Follow Sub-Reddits, or even PornHub; follow the latest releases on FDroid and sooo much more. I am telling you, this RSS-Bridge is amazing and you can use it as a proxy for connecting your Friendica to pretty much the entire internet.

So yah…slowly you can add up as much stuff to your friends/follows as you want. Create a stream of what you love from the entire Internet.

Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and the like, thought people that they should be spoon fed. You wait for them to feed you, and that led to a world where what you consume is always what these platforms are feeding you. And they do that based on their own interests, not yours. And you end up being unable to control that spoon ->>

It takes a bit of time to move to a place like Friendica. But not as much as you might think. However, you have to get used to feed yourself. Grab that spoon. Choose your food. You will see that it makes a huge difference in the long term.

SEE YOU ON FRIENDICA!

Integrate with RSS-Bridge · Issue #9446 · friendica/friendica

Friendica is amazing and one of the unique features is that it works with all of the other federated protocols + twitter + rss. It means, I can follow anyone out there (almost), and engage with the...

^GitHub