By default, brand new Mastodon and Fediverse servers will be totally blank, with no users or posts visible at all. Searches will produce no results.
As people start signing up and posting and following accounts from other servers, the timelines and search results will start to fill up as the server starts noticing more of the Fediverse. However, this discovery process can be very slow to begin with, and those on new servers may sometimes be frustrated by the slowness.
Server admins can speed up this process by subscribing to relays. Relays automatically push posts from other servers’ public timelines onto the subscribing server, greatly expanding the subscribing server’s view of the Fediverse.
How to subscribe to a relay server on Mastodon
- Log into your server’s website using your server’s admin account
- Go to ⚙️ Preferences > Administration > Relays
- Click Setup A Relay Connection
- Paste the URL of the relay into the box and click Save And Enable
⚠️ WARNING: Some relays are better moderated than others. Some relays may contain content that breaks your own server’s rules, or may even be illegal in your country. It’s really important to check what kind of content a relay contains before you connect your own server to it. Relays are usually based on specific servers, so you can see such a relay’s content by browsing its server’s Federated feed and reading that server’s rules.
Also, bear in mind large and general relays may fill your server with content that you mostly aren’t interested in, and use up lots of resources at the same time. Smaller, more specific relays may be much better suited to your server’s resources.
Finding general relays
There’s a list of Fediverse relays at RelayList.com ⧉. Please bear in mind the warnings above before using this list, and check that the content on the relays is suitable for your server.
FediBuzz Relay: Creating your own custom relays
This is a new service that lets you create custom relays based on specific hashtags or specific other servers. This can greatly reduce the amount of resources required by relays, as it only sends posts that are relevant to the topics you have selected for your server. You can find out more on its website at relay.fedi.buzz ⧉.