Interacting with people from other instances
Due to its federated nature, other people using Plume do not necessarily have to be registered on the same instance as you.
However, you can still interact with them (follow them, like their articles, comment on them…).
If you try to interact with someone, or something while not being on your home instance, then
you will be prompted to either log in on the current instance,
or to enter your full user name (in the username@instance.tld format) to be redirected
to your own instance (where you are logged in).
Entering the URL manually
You can also make your own instance discover other blogs, or accounts by entering their URL manually.
The URL to enter for distant profiles is https://your.instance/@/name@other.instance.
For blogs it is https://your.instance/~/name@other.instance
(the only difference is that one uses @, while the other uses ~).
When opening a remote profile like that, Plume will fetch articles this person has already published. However, it can take some time, so try to refresh the page a few times if no articles appears on the first try. Also note that old articles are not yet fetched when viewing a remote blog for the first time (this issue will probably be fixed sooner or later, see #542 for updates).
Start to federate
As soon as you start an interaction with someone on another server (i.e. by subscribing to them), their instance will discover that you exist, and thus will broadcast the articles from its feed to you. You will then be able to see those in your federated feed.