SOLUTION: literally write out [exclamation mark]community@instance. Do not use the autocomplete function. This works in both the sidebar and comments.

Using the URL markdown method (to have the display text be different from the dynamic link) impacts other UIs.

If you enter this:

You get this:

The links in the screenshot above will work in a graceful manner irrespective of what instance (or even what UI/platform?) you use.

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Original Text

What are the best practises for adding links to other communities in your sidebar?

I mod the LW hardware community and all the links are tied to LW.

So https://programming.dev/c/linuxhardware

is linked via https://lemmy.world/c/linuxhardware@programming.dev

But that would mean anyone not on LW would get a logged out view of LW accessing the programming.dev/linuxhardware community. I don’t have a programming.dev account so I added an LW-specific URL.

Is there some sort of markdown code that would “auto redirect” the user to a view based on their instance without any use of explicit URLs. For a second I thought that’s what the exclamation mark does, but turns out it’s just a shortcut for adding community URLs.