Here at Discord.Me, we are all about finding online communities you love. There seems to be a community for every little thing on Discord which is what makes the platform so versatile and interesting. What if, however, there isn't a community for your interests? Or perhaps there is, but it just isn't the right type of community for you? Maybe you even want to host a server for a specific game that's run in a way that other servers aren't. In these situations and many others, instead of joining a server, you may be making your own. We're here to help with that.
This is the start of a series on Discord Setup which will eventually lead to Discord Management and Moderation blog posts as well, to cover all aspects of running a server. Without further ado, let's get started!
To first create a server, you scroll down to the bottom of your server list and click the little green plus sign. Once you've done this, click Create a Server and there you have it! You completed the first building block of constructing a server. Go ahead and give your server a name and you can even add an icon to it should you wish to. Don't sweat it though, both of these things can be changed at any time in your server settings.
You might be thinking, where are all the channels? Well, you have to make them! To make a channel you need to click the arrow down at the top left of the screen, next to your server's name. It should then bring up a menu that has a few options on it, and one of those should be "Create Channel." Some example channels you may want to have in a server are:
- general (general chatter)
- off-topic (random things)
- media (pictures of pets, selfies, videos, etc)
- music (place to post music links)
- etc!
A lot of your channels are going to be specific to your needs, and will likely develop over time as your server grows and changes. You may not need all the channels you start with, or you may need more. It's best to start with minimal channels and build up from there based on community feedback, depending on what kind of server you're running exactly. For example, a server for a game in development may have channels for frequently asked questions, development updates, bug reports, and so on. Alternatively, a "social" server may have an introductions channel or a channel for finding people to play games with. There's no set formula and no set of channels is going to work perfectly, so be prepared to make some changes!
Once you've got some channels set up, you'll want to take a look into roles and permissions, under the server settings. This is a very important portion of your server. You can name the roles whatever you want, for example having "Moderators" and "Members" and so on. Get creative with them though! The purpose of these roles is not always just to give people cool titles or different colors, however. Many tags are linked to specific permissions that the person with the tag will or will not have. For example, you don't want the base "member" tag to be able to ban people or @everyone in the server, but you may want your "moderators" to be able to do these things. Most of the toggle options for each role have descriptions beneath them, look through them, and carefully decide who will have what permissions. It's generally not recommended to toggle on "Administrator" for anyone that you do not thoroughly trust as it essentially gives them every permission besides actual ownership of the server. Choose permissions carefully!
Now that you've got these basic things set up, go ahead and invite some friends to test permissions and take your server for a spin, so to speak. This is a very basic overview of server set up and we hope it has been helpful with getting started. If there's any topic in here that you want us to expand upon, contact us on our social media and we just might make a blog post about it! Have fun with your new server and learning about the ways of the ban hammer.