Hi,

I recently added https://old.retrolemmy.com/ to retrolemmy using mlmym. This is a different frontend that makes it look like old reddit. And thus seemed like something that retrofed could use too, but since it was lemmy only, this was not possible.

However with a compatibility layer you can get (limited) piefed support by serving it as a lemmy API. What this means is, not only would a lemmy only frontend work (mlmym is added now at https://old.retrofed.com/), lemmy only apps would work too (including some older not updated apps like “sync”), if you put your instance as “old.retrofed.com” and use your normal Retrofed account.

This is not a recommended way of browsing piefed, since piefed-only enhancements will not work, as they don’t exist in lemmy. But it is a cool way of still being able to use apps that otherwise wouldn’t work on lemmy anymore (or will not work in the near future with the new API), thus perserving them in a way.

There are probably still bugs and things not working, and some could be fixed, but a lot of them are just incompatible with piefed as of today, and couldn’t be fixed.

The compatibility layer is forked from RikudouSage, and can be found at https://github.com/DaDosDude/LemmyPiefedProxy

Note: Most new code was generated using Claude. Since AI is not a popular means of coding in the fediverse I want this disclaimer here to be open and honest about this work.

Hello!

We have just updated to piefed 1.7.x. Piefed updates with regularity, and usually this is no need for a post as it usually has minor changes or fixes.

Now is a different beast. See all changes here.

Some cherry picked changes that I like:

• You can follow other users and their posts will always show up in your ‘Subscribed’ feed, regardless of the community they were posted into. Following Mastodon users works also but should be considered as very experimental. This will improve soon.
• Communities can be marked as being a favorite, which makes them more prominent in the ‘Communities’ menu.
• RSS feeds on the home page, including a feed of posts from your subscribed communities

But these are but a few. Read the post with all changes yourself if you want to know more

If you have trouble logging in, clear your cookies. If it doesn’t show up, force a refresh (with ctrl+F5 on PC)

The update went on without many problems, and only took a few minutes.

If you have any problems or questions, send me a message or reply to this thread.

Hi. As you might have noticed, the site was unavailable through apps for a part of the day. If you browse through the web interface everything was working. Apparently this is a bug with the new update of piefed.

The problem is connected with a private community, which we have on Retrofed (Bottest is only for testing my bot so I had it on private). Easiest solution before a bug fix is; temporarily making the community public, which I did.

Hopefully there will be a fix soon. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I want to welcome you all to the fediverse, piefed and retrofed specifically. If you need help starting out you can either try !newcomers@piefed.zip or you can comment here, post in this community or message me or @Die4Ever@retrofed.com directly. We are here to help.

Some basic things:

Usernames are usually written out as @DosDude@retrofed.com. The @ in front indicates a user. It looks like an e-mail adress by design, Because there can be users with the same name on different instances. For example: @DosDude@retrolemmy.com

Communities are usually written out as !meta@retrofed.com . The exclamation point indicates a community. This also looks like an e-mail address because there can also be communities with the same name on different instances.

Sometimes new communities will not load. This usually means that the community is not yet federated. You can either manually add it to lemmy-federate or you can subscribe. That way the community is federated and posts will show up. If you make a new community it is always good practice to add it to Lemmy federate. To make sure it’s federated to all participating instances and maximize your user spread.

This wiki from piefed.social can help out with further questions

Some good resources for finding communities:

https://lemmyverse.net/ - A website dedicated to finding new communities. Be sure to set your home instance using the domain name: for example: “retrofed.com”. This is to make sure that if you click a community, it automatically links it through your instance.

!newcommunities@lemmy.world - a community dedicated to promoting new communities.
!newcommunities@discuss.online - same as above.
!newcommunities@yiffit.net - same as above.

Apps

There are loads of apps for your phone on the stores. Many of them were refitted from reddit/lemmy apps to PieFed. Here’s a wiki page on apps compatible with PieFed - via piefed.social

We hope you have a good time here!