“Instance” is programmer lingo. Roughly, it’s when you have the same piece of code running multiple times with different values (as part of the same system). More narrowly, “instance” is used in the context of classes. All lemmy instances run the lemmy code but with different users, admins, and so on. The expression makes perfect sense, but it is not used in a formal way.
A lemmy instance runs a web server. Wikipedia says that when you host a web page under a dedicated domain name, you have a website.
NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
Hard to answer without some context. Got any examples for “formal website”?
In the fediverse an “instance” is any server which is running the software in question. For example, fosstodon is an instance of Mastodon. mastodon.social is also an instance of Mastodon.
Docker@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Here’s one for you to consider as an example :
zessa.in
NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
So just a website?
Websites of all types are hosted by servers. These servers can run any kind of software they want in order to serve web pages to users. There are countless different options for server software (see just some of the options on Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/…/Comparison_of_web_server_softw…), and they can run on different operating systems (Windows, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, macos, …). Two servers can serve very similar or even identical websites but run completely different software, and similarly, two servers can use the same software but serve totally different websites.
Basically it’s a free-for-all.