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.
I absolutely would have if things were handled differently, but at this point my only goal is to see spez get his ass fired.
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.