I would really love if this became an option, since I’m planning on making my own instance. I’d like to keep my subscriptions, posts, comments and bookmarks and migrating would be something great. What do you think?
See the Lemmy blog:
At the same time, we are seeing lots of requests to implement major new features, such as migration between instances, or combining similar communities. As described above, we are completely overloaded with work, and definitely won’t have time to implement these in the near future. If there is a feature you want to see implemented, you will likely need to work on it yourself, or find someone who can.
https://join-lemmy.org/news/2023-06-17_-_Update_from_Lemmy_after_the_Reddit_blackout
God I love FOSS, I contributed with a very tiny feature but it made me feel so good knowing I contributed to a beautiful, community owned, project
Do you mind sharing details about what and how you contributed? Genuinely curious.
Sorry I don’t feel like sharing my private info here, hope you undestand.
you will likely need to work on it yourself, or find someone who can.
This is the feature in question:
Moving user profile to a new instance #1985: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1985
FYI, this is more like r/AskReddit where you ask people of Lemmy, not to ask about Lemmy. This would probably be better suited for [email protected]
Hey OP, just letting you know I just released a tool that does this. It’s alpha, and only supports Lemmy BE 0.18.1-rc9 (and above), but if your source and destination meet that criteria, you can give it a whirl: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim
Do both home and target instance have to be >=rc-9?
Right now, yes - I know that’s unfortunate since we still have many instances on 0.18.0, but I’m hoping they will all move up to 0.18.1 once that is officially released, which should be soon.
Supporting multiple versions of the API would be really difficult right now with it changing so often, but the hope is that in the future you can at least use an older version of LASIM to download from an older lemmy instance, then take that profile file and upload it with a newer version of LASIM to a newer instance.
Ya no that’s fair. I just moved from a personal instance to a self-hosted instance so it’d be nice to get my blocked users list back, personally
So I’m wondering if a DIY middle ground can be reached with the API and some scripting, perhaps even just in the browser after entering your credentials.
You won’t be able to move your posts, but you could link to your old profile in your bio.
But I can see it being viable to basically download your old subscriptions and bookmarks and basically applying them to your new account.
There’s already a tool for moving over the subscriptions: https://github.com/wescode/lemmy_migrate
Nice one, cheers for sharing!
The way it works on Mastodon is you essentially set up your new account on the new instance first, then you fill in the migration settings on both accounts. One to say where you’ve moved to, one to say where you’ve moved from. This adds a migration notice to your original account telling people who stumble across it where they can find you.
You can export and reimport all the important things like your bookmarks etc, but your posts stay behind on the old profile. Your followers / following is moved across, which in this case would be analogous to your subscriptions which are of course the most important thing.
I think a system like that would be perfectly fine here too. You don’t really need to bring all your posts over to a new profile, they’ll still be there and accessible on your old one if you need them.
I think a system like that would be perfectly fine here too. You don’t really need to bring all your posts over to a new profile, they’ll still be there and accessible on your old one if you need them.
Unless the old instance goes offline forever. Your posts and comments would still exist on remote instances, but the user profile they point to is no longer accessible.
Yes, copying subscriptions is probably the most important step, but ultimately I hope to see the ability to move everything, including history and notifications to old stuff.
I’m hoping it will be rare to see an instance shut down without warning. I imagine admins in most situations would make a post warning people and give them time to migrate.
