If a community appears as a 404 page when you click it, it likely means that the community is being hosted outside of the instance you are currently using and that nobody in your instance has viewed or interacted with that specific community yet. In order to address this, you will need to copy-paste the specific handle for the community (for example, !tampabaylightning@lemmy.world) into your searchbar so that your instance can "learn" that it exists, after which the community should display via linked URLs without issue. Hopefully this is addressed by the lemmy devs and streamlined in the near future.
Yeah, that's because the direct link takes you to a different server.
Instead, copy the link, and in your instance click on the search icon up top, and do a search for it there. That'll give you a link relative to your server/instance. Click that and you're good.
Yep, I'm hoping that post blackout a lot of the people that started new communities will start advertising their community.
I think one thing that could really help would be "official" browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox that turn lemmy links from a instance specific URL to their instance URL automatically so it "just works"
e.g. your browser sees https://lemmy.world/c/winnipegjets and it automatically changes it to https://{your-defined-instance-domain}/c/winnipegjets@lemmy.world
Until then, we need to get EVERYONE using the right syntax for links like OP did on this post with his updates:
e.g. [Winnipeg Jets](/c/winnipegjets@lemmy.world) >> Winnipeg Jets
That style link only works if your instance already has someone subscribed to it. For now, only the search box will cause your instance to learn new communities.
Try this link. They default to bringing you directly to the instance the community is hosted on. This will bring you to the community from your own instance where you are logged in.