I first used lemmy on lemmy.world but due to its size I had several issues of things just not loading and needing a full page refresh. So I tried to set up my own instance and it works mostly but the federation aspect is leaving me with a few questions.
Will remote communities only sync new posts from when I subscribed or will past posts show up eventually?
Is having a single user instance realistic or should I try find another small instance?
Posts will make their way over when someone interacts with it (comments/votes on it). I think old comments may make their way over under the same conditions. Old votes will not make their way over.
You can search for a post or comment to force your instance to load it (copy the federation link, the rainbow-web-looking icon) just like you would do for communities.