I gave up on setting up my own instance today for these exact reasons. Brand new install, multiple browsers, no matter the username, no matter the length of the password, all I get is a spinning circle when I try to login with my brand new admin account. No response whatsoever from the forgot password link either.
Ah, it seems as though my issue is indeed an existing username and a lack of error message.
There seems to be an issue with the signup process on lemmy.ca. I’ve been trying to signup for a while today but the Sign Up button just keeps spinning when I click it. I’ve tried numerous things to try to fix it and nothing seems to work. Signed up on a different server so I could report the issue.
If I can eventually get it to work, I’ll be hosting my personal Lemmy instance on a Hetzner CX21 VPS (2 CPU, 4GB RAM). Unfortunately after about a dozen attempts, with many variables tweaked to try to narrow down the issue, I still get nothing but a spinning button when I try to login after installation. I find it so odd that some people have no problem getting it up-and-running, and it simply won’t work for others.