Ancestors

Toot

Written by Cătă on 2025-01-11 at 17:50

Friendica beginner help megathread

Hello, everyone! As we know what Zuck's place 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

youtube.com/watch?v=-4wsAmXnaE…

or on Peertube:

peertube.stream/w/p/4K4MWYXMEY…

(6 videos)The Future of Social is Here: a Show and Tell (part 3: Friendica) by @_elenaThe Beginner’s guide to Friendica by @tiono 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 @helpers 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?

Friendica 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 (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

You can also add Alt-Text to your image if, instead, you type . 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 and 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.

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:

Finally, 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 according to your interests.

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.

If you want to have 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 you.

How do I find groups?

Same as with regular people. There are multiple lists:

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

Bonus: Text colorsOne aspect that hasn't really been touched on in the wiki is the colors. You can have text in any color if you type the text like this [color=color_name_or_value]your text here[/color]. Hex values are accepted, however there are also some human readable names that can be used (based on this thread):

Antiquewhite

Aqua

Aquamarine

Azure

Beige

Bisque

Blanchedalmond

Blue

Blueviolet

Brown

Burlywood

Cadetblue

Chartreuse

Chocolate

Coral

Cornflowerblue

Cornsilk

Crimson

Cyan

Darkblue

Darkcyan

Darkgoldenrod

Darkgray

Darkgreen

Darkkhaki

Darkmagenta

Darkolivegreen

Darkorange

Darkorchid

Darkred

Darksalmon

Darkseagreen

Darkslateblue

Darkslategray

Darkturquoise

Darkviolet

Deeppink

Deepskyblue

Dimgray

Dodgerblue

Firebrick

Floralwhite

Forestgreen

Fuchsia

Gainsboro

Ghostwhite

Gold

Goldenrod

Gray

Green

Greenyellow

Honeydew

Hotpink

Indianred

Indigo

Ivory

Khaki

Lavender

Lavenderblush

Lawngreen

Lemonchiffon

Lightblue

Lightcoral

Lightcyan

Lightgoldenrodyellow

Lightgreen

Lightgrey

Lightpink

Lightsalmon

Lightseagreen

Lightskyblue

Lightslategray

Lightsteelblue

Linen

Magenta

Maroon

Mediumaquamarine

Mediumblue

Mediumorchid

Mediumpurple

Mediumseagreen

Mediumslateblue

Mediumspringgreen

Mediumturquoise

Mediumvioletred

Midnightblue

Mintcream

Mistyrose

Moccasin

Navajowhite

Navy

Oldlace

Olive

Olivedrab

Orange

Orangered

Orchid

Palegoldenrod

Palegreen

Paleturquoise

Palevioletred

Papayawhip

Peachpuff

Peru

Pink

Plum

Powderblue

Purple

Red

Rosybrown

Royalblue

Saddlebrown

Salmon

Sandybrown

Seagreen

Seashell

Sienna

Silver

Skyblue

Slateblue

Slategray

Snow

Springgreen

Steelblue

Tan

Teal

Thistle

Tomato

Turquoise

Violet

Wheat

White

Whitesmoke

Yellow

Yellowgreen

=> View attached media | View attached media | View attached media

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from petrescatraian@libranet.de

Descendants

Written by anubis2814 on 2025-01-11 at 19:46

@petrescatraian @tio @_elena @FediFollows @FediTips Thanks for Sharing my video

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from anubis2814@friendica.myportal.social

Written by Cătă on 2025-01-11 at 20:02

@anubis2814 @tio @FediFollows @_elena @FediTips You're welcome, as always! 🙂

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from petrescatraian@libranet.de

Written by anubis2814 on 2025-01-11 at 20:21

@petrescatraian @tio @_elena @FediFollows @FediTips I still need to get around to making episode 3. The rest were all reworks from 2020. Need to discuss channels and a few other things

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from anubis2814@friendica.myportal.social

Written by Cătă on 2025-01-11 at 20:48

@anubis2814 I'm looking forward to it 😁

@tio @FediFollows @_elena @FediTips

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from petrescatraian@libranet.de