Making a Community

By-> >< _ >< (Crenshaw)

So, we all know about discord, but you want to make your own server. It's a great thing, a nice free chat room with almost unlimited organization, webhooks, bots, and more, though there's one issue everyone has. Where do I begin?
*note I change between "guild" and "server", but they mean the same thing.

Creating a Server

I bet you've noticed that if you were to scroll down to the bottom of your server list you see something that looks like this:

We have that safari icon, and the plus sign. Choose the plus sign, this will prompt you to create a server.

It's tempting to use the templates already there, but they basically provide you with almost nothing, and none of them includes pre-made roles and permissions for them. So you'll be clicking on the "Create My Own" button.

Yes, it is painstakilingly light mode, Discord hasn't bothered to make a dark mode version....

Wait where's my server?
Discord added this section where it prompts you to make it "For a club or community" or "For me and my friends", then there is the hyperlink at the bottom that says "skip this question". Choose the hyper ink that says "skip this question".

After Selecting this you'll notice that you have a perfectly plank server that is yours for the making! You may feel overwhelmed with all the ideas you have and everything you want to implement on you server, it's okay I'll help keep your ideas in check, and doing them in order.

Creating Roles

There are two things to take into consideration when making your roles, this is PRIORITY and POWER. These usually go hand-in-hand but in some occasions they don't.

Priority

The aspect of priority is that the higher the role is the more people would want it, even if it doesn't have mod or admin capabilities. For example, on most servers there is usually a role for server boosters that is right below the moderators. People want this role since it's higher up, this will encourage server boosting, even though it doesn't have admin or moderation powers.

Power

Power is the aspect of HAVING moderation and admin capabilities. This is pretty simple to wrap your head around, these roles are usually the top most role, although take for example a "police/assistant" role. This role is not displayed separately like the server booster role, however, it has power, it allows these people to kick, ban, and manage roles.

Alright, I taught you about priority and power, now to actually make some roles. Looking at the top-left area you'll see your server's name, and a small arrow that is pointing up, select the arrow to open a drop down member. In the drop down there's an option called "Server Settings", select it.

I highly suggest quickly scrolling down to the bottom in "Overview" and changing it to "Only @mentions" before continuing.

You will see a side panel that holds all of the background options for your server.
The second option (underneath the "Overview option) is one called "Roles", select it.
After going to the "Roles" section you'll see the permissions for @everyone, disable everything there, except for "Read Text Channels & See Voice Channels", "Send Messages", and "Read Message History". This will be helpful for anti-raid, and quarantine situations that I'll cover later on.

~(skip this if you don't want a verification system)~
There is a little "+" sign next to the word "ROLES" at the top (above where @everyone is), by clicking on this this will make you a brand new generic role. Label this role "members" or whatever term you want to use for the people that join your server. I suggest toggling each option to your liking so you don't have to go back later and change it for whatever reason(s).

Other Roles

There are some basic roles I suggest you create right now before moving on.

Admin This role is ver simple to make, it's high in priority and power, drag it to the top of your roles, and simply toggle the following switches.

Administrator
Display role separately from online members
Allow anyone to @mention this role

This will get rid of your crown, but it's nice to have extra backup if needed.

Mod Similar to Admin, but with less abilities. Drag this role so it's below everything, and give it the following permissions:

Display role separately from online members
Manage Roles
Kick members
Ban members
Manage nicknames
Manage emojis
Manage Web Hooks
Mute Members

Server Booster Place below admin and toggle

Display role separately from online members

Creating Channels

Maybe you just want a temporary guild with only a #General and General VC. This post is not for that, this is for making a ROBUST THICK BEEFY STRONG SERVER. We're going to go on and keep making our server.

Category
For the category and channels we are making it'll be the basic ones like, suggestions, Admin-chat, rules, and announcements
To make a category, right click on the channel panel and click "Create Category". Make it private so only the @members role can read, I suggest doing this for any category your create, that way you can implement a verification system.

If you don't want a Verification system, I suggest not making the category private.

You can change the settings of the category by right clicking on the category name in the panel with all the channels+categories and clicking on "edit category". This will make it so that any new channel created under that category is default set to those permissions.

Channel
To make a channel go to the category you made, and click that little + sign. You'll be prompted to name the new channel you want to create. On you newly created channel you can open settings by clicking on the cog, or gear.

Starting
When deciding where to start, think about where you start when you join a server, act as if you're one of the members that just joined your guild.
Here's a list of where you should start.

Rules
Verification
Announcements
Memes

These types of channels can be used to make any other type of channel you want, consider these as the "bases".

Rules

There are a few ways you can format your rules, plain text, code block, file, or embed. I want to tell you right now to NEVER do plain text or file. It's dull, no one wants to download rules, plain text is not appealing.

Rules - Embed Go to DiscoHook and read a bit, then hit clear all, make an embed.
Here is an example of Ripped's embed that I made.
This requires knowledge about web hooks, I'll cover more about this another time.

Example from Ripped.

Rules - Code Block We know about the ability to do something like

none

But, these code blocks can be used to color things.
My go-to is css but you can play around with other languages if you want.

Private server

Verification Channel

~(skip this if you want to)~

This requires a bot and for this blog post I'll be using YAGPDB.xyz and DiscoHook, You don't have to use an embed, it just looks nicer. Watch this video or just refer to the docs on it here.

After making a role group with ONLY THE MEMBER ROLE it's pretty straight shooting.

Embed Go to DiscoHook and send an embed that looks something like this:

You can also use the rules message you made earlier, to make sure the new user reads the rules.

Now that you have the message you need to get the id of the message. (you need to enable developer mode) This is pretty easy, just click the three in the top-right area of the message an click on "Copy ID".

Easy

Now thanks to the simplistic power of YAGPDB we can run this command and be all done: -rolemenu create <group name> -m <message id> . Once you have finished completing the role/verification menu, any user that selects that button will now be given the member role.

-(IMPORTANT)-
Have @everyone have no permissions but to "Read messages" and "Read message history" in you rules, and announcements channel.
Use your members role as the base role instead, let them read and send message in general, not @everyone

Announcements Channel 1 (Enabling Community)

~(NOT FOR GUILDS THAT WANT TO BE PRIVATE AFTER 10,000 MEMBERS)~

Go to your server's settings and go to "Enable Community". This will prompt you to do a thing or two first, like making an admin channel, based off what I showed you already this is completely doable for you!

Make a new channel, before you continue though set the channel type to "Announcements". Make sure though that no one can type in it. (since admins can do anything they want you don't have to add perms for the admin role!)
Now your members can choose to have your Announcements channel show up in their own guild! (This is by clicking the "Follow" button) This will help promote you server massively, since the further you reach out, the more members you'll get.

You can ping @everyone for every post that way the people on your server gets notified of import things.

Announcements Channel 2 (Alternate Solutions and More)

Base
Make a normal channel, make sure no one can type in it. This is essentially the same as an announcements channel with enabled community, but people can not "follow" it.

You can combine some of these together, like embed and @announcement pings.

Option 1: Message Normal text
This is just a normal concept, you write you message and send it, nothing fancy

Option 2: Message Code Block
You could use ```css like I mentioned in the Rules section.

Option 3: Message Embed
DiscoHook is a great idea, just make sure that you keep the color, title, and whatevers the same! You can save it in the "Backups" option at the top.

Option 1: Ping @everyone
Every message you could do @everyone

Option 2: Ping @announcement/@notifications
Make a role menu so people can give themselves a role, which has no priority or power, that you can ping instead of @everyone. This is much preferred among your members so that the ones who don't want to be pinged, don't get pinged.

Option 3: Ping Automatic
I'll be using glorious YAGPDB for this, but essentially you can use a sticky message. This will make it so whenever you send a message, it'll ping, or have whatever content you want.
To get a role ID you need to go roles in settings, and right click on the role and select "copy ID" Format: <@ROLEID>
You'll have to make a new custom command in the YAGPDB control panel, be sure to set the command type to regex.

{{/* Trigger. .* 
Trigger Type: Regex  
Usage: Just type :)  Made by TheHDCrafter#0001*/}} 

{{$message :=print "text"}}{{/*edit anything in this line after -print-*/}}
{{$db := dbGet .Channel.ID "stickymessage"}}
{{if $db}}
      {{deleteMessage nil (toInt $db.Value) 0}} 
      {{$id := sendMessageRetID nil $message}} 
      {{dbSet .Channel.ID "stickymessage" (str $id)}}
{{else}} 
      {{$id := sendMessageRetID nil $message}}
      {{dbSet .Channel.ID "stickymessage" (str $id)}}
{{end}}

Memes Channel

Make a channel and name it "memes". You'll only have to toggle three things for the members role (or everyone if you're not doing verification), you can leave the rest un-toggled if you want.

Read Message
Send Messages
Read Message history

This will make a basic channel that you members can chat in and post their memes, although I'll take it one step further for you.

Reddit Feed(s)
There are a couple bots that do this, but I'll be using YAGPDB here.
Navigate yourself to the "Reddit" section in the YAGPDB control panel. From there simply configure the reddit feed as you wish, I recommend r/dankmemes or r/memes. This will have the bots occasionally post a meme from the subreddit, when a posts hits enough upvotes, or when there is a new post.

I also suggest adding Dank Memer since I bet you know the iconic command pls meme.

Promoting Your Community

Amazing! You have you brand new server, now to get out into the world.

Advertisement Channels

On some of the servers you are on you may notice that there is a channel called "Advertising" post you channel in there, usually you get a few people.

Friends/Word of Mouth

Invite your friends! If you can, ask them to share the server among what servers they may be on.

Website

My personal favorite; you can use Google Sites, Wix, SquareSpace, or even host you own! A website is a great way to show off your server and what it does.

Members+

This is a discord bot, that adds members to your server. I'm not a fan although it works really well, you should earn you reputation, not have a bot do it all for you.

Thank you for reading, I really appreciate it. Any comments on what I should write next, anything you want help with, or know more about I'll likely do it!

I'll write about Discord, Discord Bots, piracy, Write a review for you guild, basically anything on Discord or piracy.