I found a wonderful site with all sorts of instances to join here. Most work. This is the link to their most popular 100 topics, rather than to the main page.

fedi.directory/top-100-topics/

And groups do exist here! I found a page about them at the below site. It's about Mastodon, but the advice should apply to Friendica as ell.

fedi.tips/how-to-use-groups-on…

in reply to Georgiana Brummell

@clifton

Thanks for the recommendations! 😊

Just to make clear:

Tips for using this place are at fedi.tips

Servers to join are at fedi.garden

Accounts to follow are at fedi.directory

I just went here.

joinmastodon.org/servers

I saw a way to sort servers. I checked several boxes. But there is no "search", or "go", or "continue" button or link, and all that showed up was a few things. Yet I had several boxes checked. Am I only supposed to check one at a time, and then, the various options are displayed? If so, why did they use checkboxes and not radio buttons? I am not new to computing. I've just never seen anything like what I've observed during the last few days. None of it makes sense!

This is driving me mad. I'm going to various servers with themes that interest me. But at each one, I keep seeing completely unrelated posts. Sometimes, they're the same ones. Yet when I go to other instances, this doesn't happen. I used different words (servers/instances) because that's how they were described at the sites where I found them. Some have a follow option and some don't. The ones that don't usually ake me to something called explore, and that's when I see all of the completely unrelated posts. How can I ensure that, when I go somewhere, I see the posts from there? Now, I just saw one that I can't follow, but it it didn't take me to an explore page, nor could I see posts on it. This is so confusing!
in reply to Georgiana Brummell

Hello again!

So, some servers may have a theme, and it may be full of people interested in that certain topic, but they will still post about things, which may be what you were seeing.

Much like friendica.world is your "portal" to the fediverse, other people go through other servers like mastodon.world, beige.party, or mastodon.online. When you see people you want to follow on these other servers, all you have to do is enter their username while you're looking at your Friendica. World account, and then you will receive their posts even though they are on a different server.

One of the downsides of this server currently is that it is fairly new, so us people located on it haven't followed too many people, which leads to *our* side of search not finding much. As long as you have a username you want to follow, that part shouldn't matter though.

in reply to Georgiana Brummell

You are very welcome! I do believe the tags you speak of work that way, and I know mastodon has them too, but at this point I don't know if that particular thing crosses over... The good news is that interoperability is increasing all the time!

Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any other questions. I might not know the answer, but will do my best to find it!

in reply to Georgiana Brummell

in reply to end0fline

I just went to the contacts page. As before, I saw nothing about adding a new contact, only searching among mine. I'm not sure what's going on there. But it does seem that I can use the regular search option at the top of my homepage to find people. I just wonder why there is nothing about adding a contact there. I do see something like that when I go to an actual instance, etc.