Is it possible or does it present difficulties with federation?
I’m asking because today Vlemmy seems dead and people are speculating it has something to do with losing the domain name. So I want to know if there is a possibility the same server could come up again under a different domain but keeping the same accounts and content stored or if they will need to set up a new server and thus it’s just better to move on to another instance.
Absolutely. It should be trivially easy for the owner to get a new name and point it at the server if it still exists and is working. However, I understand that we know very few facts about the situation.
Don’t let that discourage you from having accounts on other instances. One shouldn’t get too tied to a specific one IMHO.
EDIT: Should be. Not sure what happens with usernames.
I’m not so sure.
The reason the domain is part of our usernames, is so that there can’t be two users with exactly the same name.
If a server could change its domain name after initial setup, that would break.
Links break. Storage, functionality, local links don’t break.
Yes they do. At least with matrix, shit goes SUPER WRONG with the local database if you try to change your domain.
To the point that the only way to really change it is to purge the whole thing and start over.
Lemmy is not matrix though.
I guess we’re both making broad assumptions.
I never thought of that. I’m not so sure how the net would take it. I don’t know the code closely enough to answer that question. I’ll edit my answer to reflect that.
? But when interacting with local content your name ha sno server associated with it, so the server info is only present for federated content.
Bringing the old server back up configured with a new name could… Maybe send out duplicate content with the new name? Idk enough about activitypub yet.
I take it as it doesnt mess with federation? So people that subscribed to communities there would remain subscribed? I had thought that the path changing would mess things up.
As for having accounts on multiple instances, its just not my style really, I like having a single instance to focus entirely (I interact with few communities so making multiple accounts is pointless) and I was on board with the idea of the admin of not defederating unless absolutely necessary, as I prefer to be the one blocking communities and instances rather than another person. As I said I liked the owner and now I will probably have to investigate for a few hours again to find another instance, I dont really care to change instances if one goes down, but I do like having only one or at max two accounts any single time, it is a bummer because I was having conversations on DM’s and I dont remember the other person.
It will absolutely mess with federation. Accounts on the instance that moved should be relevantly unaffected, but anyone from external instances subscribed to local communities will need to subscribe to the new domain.
Federation is actually a big issue with this. Because Lemmy federation is set up in a way where the other servers that federate with your server will try to access you using your domain, changing the domain breaks all of that. The only way I can think of to fix this would involve a centralised server, which the Lemmy devs definitely don’t want.