The search behaviour is really odd. Basically, if a given community has never been searched for from your instance before it needs extra time to pull the data. So search will show no results, sometimes for a good 15-20 seconds, and then suddenly update to have a result!

Make sure as well when you’re doing your search, you include the ! at the start and you’re searching “all” not “communities” from the dropdown.

You can also try these direct links Gamedev, Godot but if your instance hasn’t yet pulled them for the first time those links will 404.

Hey, I’m guessing you’re new today :)

You can subscribe to communities elsewhere, but you need to access them through your home instance first. There are usually instructions in the sidebar telling you the address to put into your home instance’s search to find them.

However in this case since both you and I are both on lemmy.world, and I’m subbed to both of these, our instance already knows about them. Which means you don’t need to do the search and can just go straight there: Gamedev, Godot

Sorry if that’s super confusing, it’ll make sense in no time I promise :D