Welcome back for our second financial update. See the first one here.

This quarter we added a little bit of hard drive space and 1GB of RAM but haven’t been charged for it yet. As I paid for the VPS for 6 months in February, there are no further VPS charges this quarter.

Expenses for April-June 2026: $28.33

The expenses are made up of:

• VPS: $0
• Image and backup storage: $28.33

Expenses are allocated to the period they were paid, not to the period they cover. This is based on the actual amount charged to my card.

Contributions in April-June 2026: $140

We received five donations totalling $140 this quarter. Donations are based on the amount the person donated, as listed by Buy Me A Coffee (before their fees). At the end of the year I’ll do a match up to try to match actual payout to donated amount to see what this difference is.

Overall position: -$177.86

• Opening balance: -$289.53
• Contributions: $140
• Expenses: -$28.33
• Total: -$177.86
• Percent of expenses paid for by contributions (this year): 55%

An update on our VPS

During the quarter we added 10GB of storage space and 1GB more RAM but otherwise the VPS seems to be sized appropriately. Last time I mentioned bandwidth usage and the potential to move away from Cloudflare. As a step towards this, I have disabled Cloudflare image caching, so all images should come via the server. This could also impact the load speed for geolocation reasons so we will see how this goes.

Donations

If you want to contribute to the cost of running Lemmy.nz, see the post here. Or the direct link: https://buymeacoffee.com/lemmynz

The usual caveat: Please don’t contribute if it will impact you financially. I don’t want to see anyone saying “I only had $5 in my bank account but Lemmy is important so I donated my last $5” like I’ve seen on other instances. If you can’t afford it then don’t feel bad, this round is on me. I don’t mind, truly. But if you can easily chip in a few bucks a month, then it is appreciated 🙂

Pātai

As usual, feel free to ask any questions!

A week back I posted a poll for LemmyNZ users to vote for a new logo.

The results are in.

The winner was the globe by @Manticore@lemmy.nz!

Out of the LemmyNZ users, we had 8 votes for the winning entry, 2 votes for Kimmy, and 1 vote to keep the existing logo. I even made some graphs:

Pie

Bar

Hi all,

TL;DR: If you’re a LemmyNZ user, go and vote for your preferred logo here:

A few weeks back there was some discussion in the weekly kōrero posts about replacing out logo. The logo was AI generated, was done using the really early tools available at that time, and was our logo before there were any users other than me. I’ve always hated it, and have wanted to replace it for a long time.

Of the back of that discussion, I started a vote. I underestimated how much people cared, and so cancelled the vote but learnt that people seem to like the banner (Laser kiwi).

I asked for help in this post, and one user played with some ideas for us (various versions in that post) and has come up with a cool logo with NZ the centre stage of the world. For good measure, I have kept the existing logo and the one from the previous vote in the poll.

I have also left the banner out this time. Last time I had them grouped and it wasn’t clear if people liked the banner or the logo. We don’t have a good suggestion to replace the banner so unless people have suggestions we can leave the laser kiwi.

The images in this vote are:

“Revenge for not being on so many world maps. Now its our turn to be the world map” by @Manticore@lemmy.nz

Kimmy the kiwi/lemmy logo hybrid, that I made and came about from the chat in the weekly kōrero:

And the existing one:

This is a vote for the logo of the LemmyNZ instance, so please only vote if your account is on LemmyNZ.

You can vote here.

Way back at the beginning, when genAI was new and LemmyNZ had but one user, our logo was created. It’s terrible, it’s AI generated, and I hate it.

I am keen to get a new one! There’s also an option to get a new banner if that’s what people want, though people have expressed that they like the current banner.

This post is to ask for people to supply their ideas for a new logo or banner. Hopefully there are some artists out there that can help! After we have some options I will organise a vote.

Reply to this post with your suggestions or your submissions.

Just a quick note to say I’ve updated LemmyNZ to run 0.19.19 today.

It was only just released, and only resolves security issues, so you shouldn’t see any changes. Release notes here.

UPDATE: While the new logo is marginally winning, I wasn’t expecting this much interest. I also regret grouping the logo and banner instead of asking separately as many people seem to like the existing laser kiwi banner. I’ll try to drum up some more suggestions.

Hi all! We’ve had the crappy logo since LemmyNZ started, and I’ve had on my list to update it. With a bit of discussion in the weekly chats, I now have a proposed replacement.

Please vote on the new logo to see if we will adopt it as the LemmyNZ logo.

Vote here

Hi all,

TL;DR at bottom

Tonight I’ve noticed some issues loading images. Any images already proxied work fine, but new images were failing to load at all. Not sure how long it’s been happening for today, but this led to a pretty shit experience browsing Lemmy 🫤

You might not be aware, but most images are run through the proxy at lemmyNZ so that when you browse, you’re only loading images direct from Lemmy (other than a few exceptions, such as imgur, which blocks this and is also commonly used).

The main benefit to this is privacy. Without it, images are loaded direct from the site. This means as you scroll your feed, all those sites know you specifically (or at least your IP address) are seeing their content in your feed on Lemmy. By proxying the images, only LemmyNZ is seen as the one loading the image then it passes it on to you.

Lemmy does support only proxying thumbnails, so other sites are not called unless you click on something, but for some reason Lemmy NEVER deletes the thumbnail, and your storage just fills up and up with no way to clear it.

So tonight I’ve been trying to troubleshoot. I have upgraded Lemmy to the latest version (relase notes for 0.19.17 here, and 0.19.18 here. Only minor changes), updated the image version to the latest version, and restarted everything a few times. As of writing it seems ok, but I do want to know people’s thoughts on this.

Do people like to have the images proxied so sites aren’t tracking them? Or should we prioritise stability, where images are more likely to load consistently and have a better browsing experience if we load them from the site directly?

If the image proxy stays stable going forward, we could still consider an exception for images loaded directly from other Lemmy instances, which could reduce load a bit while still protecting from most tracking.

It’s worth noting if we want to move off Cloudflare, not proxying much will likely help with speed, but we’ll also be loading a lot of stuff off Cloudflare still from the other sites using it. I say it will likely help with speed because images are currently stored in an EU data centre, they load relatively quick because Cloudflare caches more locally. If we leave Cloudflare then images may have a longer delay to load.

TL;DR Image proxy in Lemmy has been unstable tonight so you might have noticed not being able to see any images. Curious on people’s thoughts on continuing to use it:

1. Keep proxying as much as possible even at the expense of some failing images
2. Proxy most content but add some exceptions for content loaded direct from other Lemmy instances, and some common big image hosts
3. Proxy nothing
4. Other

Thoughts?

Hi all, this is (I think) the first Lemmy.nz financial update! In case you missed it, we are no longer piggybacking on someone else’s hosting and now have our own virtual server.

Now that we have to pay our own way, I am going to start doing semi-regular updates about how things are going. I am thinking quarterly updates.

This quarter we have migrated to a new VPS and moved images to object storage, each of which has an ongoing cost. Other potential costs are email sending (which to date I don’t believe we have ever crossed over the free sending threshold for Mailgun) and the domain registration, which is already paid up for a couple of years.

Expenses for January-March 2026: $369.53

The expenses are made up of:

• VPS: $358.10
• Image and backup storage: $11.43

Expenses are allocated to the period they were paid, not to the period they cover. The VPS expense covers the first month, plus a further 6 months, which makes this look a lot more expensive than it should. The image and backup storage only includes a partial month for February and does not include March as March will be billed in April based on usage.

Contributions in January-March 2026: $35

We received two donations totalling $35 this quarter.

Overall position: -$289.53

This ending balance is mostly because I have paid for hosting 6 months in advance. I started collecting donations late last year, and we had $45 donated, so we actually started with $45 at the start of the quarter.

• Opening balance: $45
• Contributions: $35
• Expenses: -$369.53
• Total: -$289.53
• Percent of expenses paid for by contributions: 21%

An update on our move to the VPS

We have now had over a month on the VPS. The specs we have seem to be appropriate with RAM constantly at 80% use, the CPU peaks at an occasional 90% but averaging around 40%, and the hard drive storage at about 83% which may need a little more space soon, adding another dollar or two a month.

In March we cut it pretty close on bandwidth usage as I am using a new backup tool and didn’t have compression set up right initially, which burnt through a lot of data in the first week. So I have been carefully rationing what is used for offsite transfer to keep us within the 1TB allocation for this month, however, it does feel like we could move away from Cloudflare’s caching and still be within the 1TB in the future. I will let it run all April and see what sort of usage we have.

Donations

If you want to contribute to the cost of running Lemmy.nz, see the post here.

The usual caveat: Please don’t contribute if it will impact you financially. I don’t want to see anyone saying “I only had $5 in my bank account but Lemmy is important so I donated my last $5” like I’ve seen on other instances. If you can’t afford it then don’t feel bad, this round is on me. I don’t mind, truly. But if you can easily chip in a few bucks a month, then it is appreciated 🙂

Pātai

As usual, feel free to ask any questions!

Hi all!

TL;DR We now collect donations directly. You can donate to LemmyNZ’s server costs here: https://buymeacoffee.com/lemmynz

LemmyNZ is hosted in a data centre in Auckland, and costs around $60NZD per month to run.

You can now donate to LemmyNZ here: https://buymeacoffee.com/lemmynz

If making the donation will materially affect you, PLEASE DON’T DONATE! Lemmy.nz is not going to die if you don’t donate. Please only donate if you have plenty of money, but if you can donate on a regular basis without it materially affecting you, then please consider a regular donation.

Also, it’s only a “donation” in the loosest form of the word. It’s not a tax deductible donation as we aren’t registered as a charity or approved donee organisation. It is simply a contribution to the costs of running LemmyNZ.

I’ve been neck deep in Lemmy stuff recently and realised we don’t have a post that explains the different frontend options that are available on Lemmy.nz.

If you don’t like the Lemmy.nz website, you can test out one of the other website versions to see if one is to your liking (or use a Lemmy app, of which there are now many).

The default website is called lemmy-ui, and is accessed at lemmy.nz.

In addition, we have the following alternate websites. You use the same login details, it’s the same site, it’s a bit like using a different app to connect.

• Mlmym: old.lemmy.nz
• Alexandrite: a.lemmy.nz
• Photon: p.lemmy.nz
• Tesseract: t.lemmy.nz
• Voyager: voyager.lemmy.nz
• Blorp: b.lemmy.nz

I don’t actively monitor these, but they do have automatic updates. If one isn’t working, please let me know!

If you have any questions, feel free to reply here.

You may not be aware we have a Matrix chat room that anyone can join.

Quick start

Just want to join?

• If you don’t have an account sign up for an account on matrix.org (or any other Matrix server)
• Download Element (or any Matrix client) and log in
• Join the chatroom by clicking here

What is Matrix?

Matrix is a chat platform. It is similar to Discord or Slack, if you’re familiar with those, but Matrix is decentralised - similar to Lemmy.

Note that, in the same way there are multiple sites and multiple apps made by different people that you can use Lemmy with, there are also multiple sites and apps you can join Matrix with.

Why Matrix? (and not Discord, Slack, etc)

Matrix is very popular across Lemmy and the wider Fediverse, and it is for this reason we also use Matrix.

Where can I get an account?

As Matrix is decentralised, you can sign up on any instance, which will allow you to communicate with anyone on your own or any other instance.

The sign up link for the biggest server matrix.org can be found here.

I have an account, what next?

There are many different Matrix clients, but the most popular is Element, made by the same people that created the Matrix protocol. You can download it here. Also see the list of clients here.

Install it, log in, then go to this link to get the option to join the chatroom.

The end

Reply with any questions or if you’re having trouble and we will try to help!

Not all NZ content is on this instance, so I thought it would be helpful to create a list of NZ focused communities (with some level of filtering) to help people find what they are looking for.

Links are handled a bit weird at the moment in Lemmy. These communities will be linked to the Lemmy.nz page for the community, to make it easier for our users to subscribe. If you’re on another instance, the page will give you a community address to copy to the search bar of your instance, e.g. “!support@lemmy.nz”. Copy this to the search form, click search, and wait 5-10 seconds for it to show up (quicker if someone else has searched before you).

Communities marked as (new) may not have much content yet.

General

• !newzealand@lemmy.nz - share posts about Aotearoa. For NZ related posts that don’t fit better in another community.
• !offtopic@lemmy.nz - For memes, random thoughts, or discussion of international news for NZers.
• !politics@lemmy.nz - For posts about NZ politics or where the government is central to the article.
• !support@lemmy.nz - Ask for help on Lemmy.nz, also used for announcement posts
• !averagenz@no.lastname.nz (new)

Regional discussion

• !auckland@lemmy.nz - Auckland, or top half of North Island
• !wellington@lemmy.nz - Wellington, or bottom half of North Island
• Te Wai Pounamu / South Island - South Island

Outdoors

• !nzwildlife@no.lastname.nz - Photos and other content about NZ wildlife.
• !outdoors@no.lastname.nz - Post about NZs outdoors.
• !huntingfishing@no.lastname.nz - Posts about hunting and fishing, tips and trips (new).

Other

• !trees@no.lastname.nz - Discuss trees and shrooms for medical and therapeutic use (new).

If you have found any others that are starting to get traction or would make a good complement to these, then reply below!

Welcome to the Lemmy.nz! We are dedicated to fostering a positive and inclusive environment for all members. To ensure a respectful and enjoyable experience, we require that you adhere to the following code of conduct:

1. Don’t be a dick: Treat all members with respect and kindness. Avoid personal attacks, harassment, discrimination, hate speech, or any form of abusive behavior. No promotion or encouragement of suicide, self-harm, or violence against others.
2. Good faith participants only: No trolls, no nazis, no tankies.
3. Respect Privacy: Do not share personal or confidential information about others (doxing).
4. No Spamming or Advertising: Avoid excessive posting of the same content or advertisements.
5. No disinformation: Posting of harmful disinformation is not allowed.
6. Report Inappropriate Behaviour: If you witness any violations of the code of conduct or encounter any other issues, report them to the community moderators or administrators. Help us maintain a safe and welcoming environment for all.

Failure to comply with this code of conduct may result in temporary or permanent ban, as determined by the moderators or administrators.

This code of conduct was developed in conjunction with the community. If you need more context to understand what the community deems to be acceptable, please see this thread.

Remember that the code of conduct is in place to ensure the best possible experience for all members. By participating in our community, you agree to abide by these guidelines.

Thank you for being a part of the Lemmy.nz community and for helping us create a vibrant and inclusive space for discussion!

There has been a lot of discussion about what we should or should not allow in our community. This is not a thread to tell you about a decision, this is a thread to ask your opinion about what is acceptable, and collate this in one place.

We want this to be a friendly and welcoming community to all who are friendly and welcoming. This means a necessary amount of tolerance for those with other points of view. It also means that by definition we can’t have people here that are intolerant of others.

Anyone who has been here for a while knows I am loathe to create a list of what is and isn’t allowed, because I feel that most of it is obvious, and the stuff that isn’t obvious is not simple enough to create a list. But I’ll list some things that I feel aren’t necessary to list, because others think it is necessary. This is not a complete list.

In our friendly community, we obviously don’t allow:

• Things that are illegal for us to host
• Doxing
• Hate speech or other attacks on others
• Spamming
• Trolling

Now the question is: what’s ok in our community, and how should we respond? I’m gonna number them for ease of following.

1. Is it ok to attack public figures? e.g. is it ok to say “Christopher Luxon is an idiot”? “David Seymour is a fascist prick”? “Gareth Morgan should fuck off and die”?

2. Does it count as doxing if the information is public? How public?

3. Are derogatory terms or hateful comments for people known for hate ok? Or do these attitudes contribute to an unfriendly atmosphere? i.e. is it ok to say “Kyle chapman is a fucking nazi”?

4. If what appeared as a genuine discussion turned out to be sealioning or similar, what kind of mod action should happen? Ban the user, leave the posts? Temporary or permanent ban? Ban the user and remove the posts?

5. Similar to 4, are we ok that anything in the obviously list above is removed on sight? Should a trolling post be locked, or completely removed?

6. Is there anything not mentioned yet that you feel should not be allowed, should be encouraged, or that would help turn this community into the kind of place you want to visit?

7. And finally, there have been a lot of voices on this point. Although I’ve made it clear this isn’t what I want, I feel it’s not for me to force on people: Do you think we need an explicit list of rules that state the above?

Over the last week I have heard a lot of concern over the approach that I have been taking to date: We’re all adults here (mostly), and we are a small enough group that we can talk though disagreements as long as people approach them in good faith. In my view this is working, the only negative attitudes I have seen are from people not liking this approach.

However, I have heard from many people with more experience at building communities, and they have raised a lot of concern about this approach. Therefore I am willing to hear what the community is looking for in a Lemmy instance, and willing to change the approach if that’s what people want.

I’m listening, so give me your feedback.

Welcome to all new users!

You’ll surely have questions, so I’ll try to pre-emptively answer them, and if your question isn’t covered then feel free to reply!

You might prefer a video, so have a look at this one that @Fizz@lemmy.nz has suggested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQIEiGhqV4A

What is Lemmy, anyway?

On the surface Lemmy is like Reddit, but behind the scenes it works more like email. Anyone who signs up to email can contact anyone else using email, which is different to Reddit, where you can only sign up and interact on Reddit.com. Lemmy allows different sites to all host independent communities which also seamlessly connect to each other.

The team behind a Canadian instance has a great explanation here: https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/get-started

Is this the right server for me?

Largely, It doesn’t matter! Seriously! Ok, there are some small differences, but effectively (like email) it doesn’t matter where you sign up. We are aiming for an NZ audience, so if you’re not from NZ then perhaps search this Instance list to try to find one for your location, or for a topic that interests you. It doesn’t matter, you can still subscribe to communities here and take part in discussions!

You can post, up/downvote, and reply to content on any server. Think of it like the difference between signing up with Outlook or Gmail, it’s a little different but in the end, it doesn’t really matter.

There is a caveat: Lemmy.nz doesn’t allow users to create communities, and Lemmy doesn’t currently have the ability to let users create communities on another instance. If creating a community is important to you, then consider creating your account on the instance you want to create a community on.

How can I see posts from all of Lemmy?

On the home page, there are three options for the kind of posts you see:

• Subscribed: Posts from Communities you are subscribed to (similar to reddit’s home page)
• Local: Only posts on our server. There’s no similar concept from reddit, but think of this as like a multi-reddit that shows content from all the communities on just the lemmy.nz server.
• All: Posts from all of the Lemmy communities that our server knows about - sort of like reddit’s /r/all

You can set a default in your account settings - on the website, click your name at the top right, choose “Settings”, then change the setting “Type”.

How do I find new communities to subscribe to

Probably easiest by browsing the All feed to find popular ones. However, if you’re searching for something specific, use the community browser someone set up here. At the top right of the page, click the house to set your home instance. Enter “lemmy.nz”. Now the links to the communities will take you to the lemmy.nz page where you can subscribe.

You can see a list of communities that lemmy.nz knows about by clicking “Communities” at the top of the website, then choose “All”.

There is also a list of NZ-related communities. https://lemmy.world/c/newcommunities

Where should I create a post about X?

At the top of the page, click “Communities”. On the “Local” tab, you can see all the communities that we have created on our server. For the most part these are all NZ related. For example, regional communities, NZ Politics, New Zealand (for NZ related posts not otherwise covered), and an Off Topic community for things that may not be NZ related but you’d still like to discuss with an NZ audience.

If you want to create a post about something not NZ related, consider posting from lemmy.nz to a community on another instance. See above for how to find communities. For example, you can post to !selfhosted@lemmy.world, !climate@slrpnk.net , or !lgbtq_plus@lemmy.blahaj.zone. Note there are some quirks with links at the moment, which brings me to:

I don’t like the website layout, is there an app

Everything in this post assumes you’re using the default website at Lemmy.nz - but you don’t have to! The open nature of Lemmy means there are many options to choose from.

For alternate website layouts, see Alternate frontends.

For a list of Lemmy apps, see https://www.lemmyapps.com/

Something isn’t working right

Lemmy is a platform, and is not made by lemmy.nz. Over time the platform is becoming more stable, but you can expect some level of unstability, quirks, and issues. These seem to be getting less common, though.

If you are finding something working a bit weird, feel free to create a post in !support@lemmy.nz. It might not be something we can fix, but it’s still worth creating a post because others may have helpful suggestions for you!

If Lemmy.nz isn’t run by Lemmy itself, who owns it?

I have set up Lemmy myself. Most Lemmy instances survive on donations, and this one is no exception. To support LemmyNZ, please consider donating. Information can be found here: https://lemmy.nz/post/21494039

I want a community about X, how do I create it?

Some Lemmy instances allow users to create their own communities, we do not. Lemmy.nz aims for local communities to only be NZ related, and until the existing communities become overrun we are being careful about creating any new ones.

With that said, if you want to make a community that’s not NZ focused, you can sign up on another instance and use that account to create a community, then you can make your LemmyNZ account a moderator. In general having multiple Lemmy accounts on different instances is fine and perhaps encouraged, so long as you are not using them for vote manipulation or ban evasion.

I’m having issues with my account

Locked out of your account? Rejected for creating an account because we thought you were a spammer? Banned but you think we got it wrong? Message @Dave@lemmy.nz, either through Lemmy or on Matrix, both can be done via the user page.

Choosing languages in my profile doesn’t seem to work, or something else is funny with language settings

Languages might not work the way you expect. They certainly don’t work the way I expected. Message @Dave@lemmy.nz or make a post in !support@lemmy.nz and we’ll try to sort you out. Remember most content has the language set to “Undetermined”, so make sure you select this in your language settings or you won’t see much.

I need to contact those running the instance for another reason

Message @Dave@lemmy.nz as above.

End of FAQ

Feel free to reply with any questions, and I can update this post if it seems appropriate.

You can also create a post in !support@lemmy.nz if that seems more appropriate.