If you try to create an account and it does not work - no error message, no timeout, just starring at a spinning wheel forever -, look at your chosen username. If it is longer than 20 characters, try a shorter name.
After you have gotten through the process of account creation, you might think to yourself, yo, but I can totally choose a display name, right? If you go to your account settings and change your display name and find yourself again, without an error message or anything, starring at a spinning wheel forever - try a shorter display name.
I have been told that the standard for usernames is 3 to 20 characters, though this can vary from instance to instance. But Lemmy does not tell you that. Which can be very confusing.
Disclaimer: I post this as a “for your information”, not a support request. I don’t know if the admins of this instance would even be able to help here. This is a Lemmy problem, not a Blahaj problem.
I’ve had a look, and it is customisable in the admin settings, though I’m not sure what impact it has.
There is the character limit, and then there is the lack of error message. I don’t think 20 characters is particularly unreasonable (it’s the same Reddit has). But it’s confusing that the software doesn’t tell me, the user, what the problem is.
Thank you for looking into it!
Unicode characters seem to be a problem as well, I had Esperanto letters in my display name and Lemmy wouldn’t let me post (comments were ok tho?), I tried removing them and now it works.