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• Post #4424086

  Mastodon has a feature which lets you download your complete post archive onto your computer or phone. Here's a guide all about how to use it: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/how-to-download-your-mastodon-post-archive The guide also answers lots of questions about Mastodon archives. Let me know if I've missed your question. #FediTips #Mastodon

• Post #4380817

  You can check which version of Mastodon a server is running by going to its website and then doing the following: - On a computer, look at the bottom left corner of the website to see vX.X.X (with numbers instead of Xs). - On a phone, click ☰ in the bottom right, then click "About", then scroll to the bottom of the About page to see vX.X.X (with numbers instead of Xs). Lots more info about Mastodon server versions and their significance at: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-check-which-...

• Post #4334084

  Do you want your public posts to be searchable on here? If so, you need to do at least one of these things: - Opt into "full text search" so that your public posts can be searched by all the words in them. More info at https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-opt-into-or-out-of-full-text-search-on-mastodon - Use hashtags in your public posts so that people can find them in hashtag searches. More info at https://fedi.tips/what-are-hashtags-how-do-i-use-them-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse Doing both...

• Post #4325730

  I'm an unpaid volunteer running 5 websites and 5 accounts helping people use Mastodon and the wider Fediverse. I pay their bills every month. If you want to help these sites & accounts keep going, you can buy me a coffee: ➡️ https://ko-fi.com/fedithing (No registration, choose any amount, all currencies work, one-off or monthly donations) Alternatively become a patron: ➡️ https://liberapay.com/FediThing All support greatly appreciated! 🙂 ❤️ @FediTips@social.growyourown.services, @Fed...

• Post #4284572

  Do you have any questions about using this place? Any question is fine, don't worry if it seems too simple, I'm especially wanting to help non-technical people on here. Put them in the replies (or DM if you prefer) and I'll try to get some answers for you 🙂 #FediTips

• Post #4214115

  ⚠️ Spammers from a site called SocialDB.xyz seem to be flooding Mastodon members with emails claiming to offer sponsorship opportunities (which is dubious to say the least). It's probably best to just ignore these emails, report them as spam and do not click on any of their links. They seem to be getting email addresses from websites mentioned in Mastodon profiles, if the site has a public email address. The spam assumes the linked site belongs to the account owner. #SocialDB #SocialDBXYZ

• Post #4204483

  You can control who can see your post by choosing a visibility setting when you publish it. Here's a guide to all the visibility settings and how to use them: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/who-can-see-my-posts-in-mastodon-how-do-i-send-dms-in-mastodon The guide also answers lots of questions about visibility settings. Let me know if I've missed something! If you want to restrict who can see your post, choose "Followers Only" (only your followers can see it) or "Only People I Ment...

• Post #4170204

  You can hide your Mastodon profile's follows and followers by editing your profile. Full guide here: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/how-to-hide-your-follows-and-followers-in-mastodon They will still be visible to you when you are logged in, but no one else will be able to see them. The method for doing this changed with Mastodon 4.6.0 so you may want to check out the new location for this setting. (Thanks to @ophiocephalic@kolektiva.social for pointing out the update!) #FediTips #Mastodon

• Post #4140362

  There is a weather service on the Fediverse called FediMeteo providing forecasts in your timeline for cities and towns around the world: 1. Go to https://fedimeteo.com 2. Click your country 3. Click your town/city 4. Copy-paste the Fediverse address (looks like @ something @ something ) into the search box in Mastodon etc 5. Click follow in Mastodon etc (Don't worry if it looks blank, it just means no one from your server follows that account yet.) If you have questions ask @admin

• Post #4115692

  If you're interested in starting your own Mastodon server or other kinds of online services, you might want to check out my other website: ➡️ https://growyourown.services I've just revamped the site to feature options for all tech skill levels (including none!). You can follow this account for the site's latest updates: ➡️ @homegrown@social.growyourown.services Here's an easy-to-understand tutorial from the site about creating your own Mastodon server: ➡️ https://growyourown.s...

• Post #4092613

  If you are able to, it's really important to add alt text descriptions when posting an item of media on here 🙂 If you forget to add descriptions, there are two ways you can be reminded. Both methods are covered in this guide: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-remember-to-add-text-descriptions-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse #FediTips #AltText #Accessibility #Mastodon

• Post #4068304

  Write Freely is a minimalist blogging platform for the Fediverse, with a focus on the text itself. You can find out more on its website at: ➡️ https://writefreely.org You can follow the official account at: ➡️ @writefreely@writing.exchange There's an official list of Write Freely servers you can sign up on at https://writefreely.org/instances and there are many others out there which aren't on the list. #FediTips #WriteFreely #Blogging #Minimalism

• Post #4034027

  There's apparently scammers going round pretending to be Mastodon admins, demanding people "verify their identity". Do not click on their links, do not give them any info. It is a scam. Genuine Mastodon server admins never demand verification like this. Here's a guide to how to recognise and avoid various kinds of scams on Mastodon and the wider Fediverse: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/how-to-avoid-scammers-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse (Thanks to @amministratore@mastodon.uno for pr...

• Post #4017193

  Mastodon has a built-in system to prevent you seeing the same post boosted again and again. However, it allows boosts to reappear if 40 other posts have passed through your main timeline, and this is why you may see the same boost repeated. As the Fediverse is now much busier, Mastodon's devs are raising this number to 80 other posts (technical details are at https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/39784). This should hopefully be in the next update. (Thanks to @nitrml@tyrol.social for p...

• Post #3990755

  There are only four ways that posts can appear in your main Mastodon timeline: - You follow the account that made the post - You follow an account that shared the post - You follow a hashtag that is included in the post - You follow a group that shared the post If you see a post in your main timeline that doesn't seem to fit into any of these categories, this guide might help you find out what is going on: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/why-is-a-post-appearing-in-my-mastodon-timeline-i-dont-unde...

• Post #3976837

  Here's a guide to all the different ways you can discover accounts to follow and videos to watch on PeerTube: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/how-to-search-peertube The different methods have pros and cons, I've tried to mention these in each section. By the way, you don't need a PeerTube account! You can follow and interact with PeerTube from within Mastodon, the videos will show up in your timeline. You only need a PeerTube account if you intend to publish videos or create playlists. #Fedi...

• Post #3967608

  If you're on a Mastodon server that needs to have the highest level of user safety, you might want to talk to your admin about whether they should activate "limited federation mode". This mode prioritises safety over connectivity, and means a server manually chooses which servers it allows federation with, while blocking all the rest by default. More info at: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/creating-an-isolated-server (Its main disadvantage is it's a lot harder to follow accounts on oth...

• Post #3967607

  Every account on here has a unique Fediverse address which looks like this: @ (username) @ (server name) You can share your Fedi address with others in real life the same way you share an email address or phone number. These can be useful if someone's account isn't showing in normal searches on your server. You can paste an account's Fedi address into the search box in Mastodon and the account will appear. More info and lots of questions answered at: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/whats-my...

• Post #3965245

  If you're following someone who posts interesting stuff but boosts way too often, you can mute just their boosts: 1. Go to the account's profile page 2. Click the ⋯ button 3. Click "Hide Boosts" Their own posts will continue appearing in your timeline as normal, but their boosts won't. #FediTips #Mastodon #Boosts

• Post #3942233

  Are you following an account which you enjoy, but it overwhelms your timeline with frequent posts? You can use Mastodon's "Lists" feature to create separate themed mini-timelines, which helps to make your main timeline less busy: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/how-to-use-the-lists-feature-on-mastodon You can then dip into the mini-timelines when you want to see their content. This is especially useful for news and media accounts, as they may post extremely frequently. #FediTips #Mastodon...

• Post #3916494

  You don't need multiple accounts on here, because one account can interact with people on other servers. It's similar to the phone network, you can use one phone to call people on other providers. However, there are certain situations where you may want to create multiple accounts (for example you might have separate personal and work accounts). If you do want to use multiple accounts, this guide answers lots of questions about why and how to do it: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/using-multiple-a...

• Post #3889184

  FitPub is a new fitness tracking platform for the Fediverse, sort of an alternative to Strava. You can follow their official account for more news: ➡️ @fitpub@fosstodon.org There are also more details on FitPub's Codeberg page: ➡️ https://codeberg.org/fitpub/fitpub (To avoid confusion, FitPub is a totally separate project to the Fediverse trail and journey tracker Wanderer, which you can find out more about at https://wanderer.to ) #Fitness #FitnessTracker #Fediverse #ActivityPub #FitPub...

• Post #3816951

  If you're running a professional account which needs to crosspost to many social networks at once, there are paid services designed specifically for this purpose which include support for Mastodon: ➡️ https://buffer.com/mastodon ➡️ https://publer.com (There used to be free crossposting services too, but Musk etc shut these down by charging for API access.) More info and questions answered on this topic at: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/crossposting-between-mastodon-and-other-social-networks/ #Fedi...

• Post #3788961

  Do you want to write posts that are longer than 500 characters? If so you might want to consider moving your account to a server that supports longer posts. Here's a list of good, reliable servers that let you write longer posts: ➡️ https://fedi.garden/tag/larger-post-size Here's an easy-to-understand step-by-step guide on how to transfer your account to another server: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-another-server #FediTips #Mastodon

• Post #3768208

  If there's a post in your timeline and you want to see the discussion thread that it comes from, just click on it. Clicking on a post in the timeline will take you to the thread view for that post, where you can see the rest of its thread by scrolling up or down. (By the way, when you click on a post try not to accidentally click on any links in the post, clicking a link opens the link rather than showing the thread.) #FediTips

• Post #3742760

  Are you writing a website link in your Mastodon post or profile? If so, remember to include https:// at the beginning so that people can click it! example.com is written without https:// at the beginning and is just a piece of unclickable text. https://example.com is written with https:// at the beginning and can be clicked to open its website. #FediTips #Mastodon

• Post #3725230

  There are many ways to use Mastodon through a desktop or laptop computer, including the official web interfaces, third party web interfaces and desktop apps. Here's a list: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/desktop-apps-for-mastodon Let me know if I'm missing something! #FediTips #Mastodon

• Post #3698022

  There are really important reasons why the Fediverse (including Mastodon) is spread out on thousands of fully independent servers: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/why-is-the-fediverse-on-so-many-separate-servers There are also really important reasons why servers don't store every post from every other server: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/why-arent-all-mastodon-and-fediverse-posts-and-accounts-automatically-visible-from-all-servers The weird quirks of the Fediverse (including Mastodon) are designed this way...

• Post #3676796

  If you see an account on here that looks blank to you, it might not actually be blank! It probably just looks blank to you because no one from your server follows the account yet. If you follow the account, its posts will start gradually showing up on your server too. If you want to see the account before following: 1. Go to its profile page 2. Click on ⋯ 3. Choose "Open in browser" (this option may be called "View on..." or "Show original page" in different apps/...

• Post #3654955

  You don't have to use the official Mastodon app if you don't want to! Mastodon is an open platform and there are lots of different apps and web interfaces which you can use. I've tried to do a guide to all the different options here: ➡️ https://fedi.tips/which-apps-can-i-use-should-i-use-the-official-app-or-a-third-party-app You can even use your account on multiple apps and interfaces simultaneously, which is a good way of comparing their features. #FediTips #Mastodon