A start-to-finish guide to set up a fun and engaging Discord server for your community, from channels and roles to moderation and safety.
As a content creator, it is very common to have a Discord server to bring your community together from multiple platforms. This server allows the creator to connect with their community on a more personal level, meeting them in voice chat lobbies and maintaining conversations in text chat channels.
Starting a Discord server is easy and doesn’t take much time, and you can make your server as simplistic or detailed as you’d like. I’ll show you how to create a new server, and then how to fine-tune it to meet your needs for your community.
Create a New Discord Server
On your Discord landing page, go to the bottom-right, below your list of active servers, and click/tap the plus symbol labeled “Add a Server”.
From there, you can decide whether to start from scratch or use a template. The templates are simple, providing you with a few text channels and voice channels.
If you’ll only be using your discord server for a small group, such as your close friends, you may not be interested in the Community features. However, if you plan to include a link to your server on your social media platforms, then the Community server would be ideal for you.
Finally, name your server and upload a photo to identify it. My community server is called Vilendria’s Army. Feel free to join it and inspect the layout!
Ta-da! You are now the proud owner of your very own Discord server! Now we’re going to get into the fine-tuning, establishing channels, roles and setting up the moderation settings.
Server Settings
In your new server, there’s a dropdown window next to your server’s name. This window is the control panel for your entire server, containing everything from roles and invites to audit logs and moderation settings.
Your server will need certain channels and categories based on the needs of your community. You may already have an idea of what these needs might be, which is fantastic. If you don’t know yet, that is perfectly acceptable too, and you can keep the server very simple until you learn those needs.
Channels and Categories
I started as an Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim streamer, and my heart belongs to the Thieves’ Guild, so I made my discord server follow a guild theme. I titled my personal role “Guildmaster”, and my moderators in the server are titled “Guild Officers”. My “rules-and-guidelines” channel is located under my “Lobby” category. My “announcements” channel is located with other channels under the “Message Board” category, and my general community chat channels and voice channels are under the “Guild Hall” category. Finally, my moderators have their own category called “Office”, where we can discuss important matters without involving the entire community.
My Discord server has been around since the beginning of 2021, so of course it has years of fine-tuning. When I first created it, there was a text channel, a voice channel, and a channel specifically for pet photos (that is still around btw). Don’t aim for perfection right away; I promise over time it will grow into itself.
Roles
To follow suit with the Guild theme, I established roles for my community members. I already said my role is Guildmaster and my mods are Guild Officers. The rest of my community is broken down into 3 roles – Recruits, Members, and Veterans. Recruits are members that accepted the rules after they joined. Once they show some interaction and engagement, I promote them to Members. Those that stick around for a long time get promoted to Veterans and are generally among my closest friends because we’ve had that amount of time to bond.
Making Private Channels and Categories
I wanted my server to have a few channels that are private to specific roles. For instance, my veterans are my closest friends, and sometimes I want to be in voice chat with them, but not necessarily any member in the server. So I created my Vet voice channel, and made it private. In the privacy settings, I permitted the roles of the moderators, myself, and the Veterans to the channel. There are many configurations you can choose for private channels, but I keep mine simple and make my private channels invisible for the roles that do not apply to them. I also made my moderator category and all of its channels private to myself and my moderators.
Moderation Settings
Now that you have your channels, categories, and roles established, we can set up the moderation settings to keep your Discord server safe. As a content creator, you may have a public discord link. A public discord server means there may not always be innocent users joining. Some users create a mass amount of bots and add them to your server. These bots can wreak havoc, posting inappropriate links and content in various channels. Without the proper safety settings in place, this can be a stressful situation to deal with. Let’s avoid those issues and get our backup plan in place.
Safety Setup
In a community server, there are 4 sections in the Safety Setup category. Each of these sections covers an important part of moderation. From Raid Protection, DM and Spam Protection, AutoMod, and Permissions, you can establish security checkpoints in your server to block potentially catastrophic events.
Raid Protection and CAPTCHA
Raid Protection and CAPTCHA allows you to opt in to notifications if activity is unusually high. I chose to send these notifications to my moderator channel, because I don’t want to disturb my community, but I do want my mod team to be aware of the issues. CAPTCHA is required for any suspicious users (new users, unverified users, etc) and users trying to join during a potential bot raid.
DM and Spam Protection
Select your verification level for new users joining your discord server. I opted for high security, requiring a user to have a verified email and have their account registered for 10 minutes before they can join my server. I opted for new members to be blocked from viewing channels and interacting until they accept the server rules. DM and Spam Protection also puts suspicious DMs into a separate Spam Inbox as opposed to your inbox. Unknown users’ DMs are requested rather than immediately listed in your inbox, and the server sends a warning to every user attempting to click a link.
AutoMod
AutoMod gives you the ability to block specific words, phrases, and spam. I organized my member roles specifically to avoid the @everyone spam mention that is so common in discord servers. These spam settings also report to your selected channel when suspicious activity occurs.
Permissions
Permissions allows you to require your moderators to 2FA before they execute moderator actions such as banning, kicking, and timing out members. I opted out of this option, because I feel that if my moderators are taking action, it’s likely serious and requires immediate action. Therefore, I don’t want them to have to take those extra steps to protect the community. Permissions also removes risky permissions from the @everyone role. This is also why I organized my members all into different roles. @everyone is never used in my server.
Audit Log
You can view every change that’s been made in your server here. From name changes to bans and kicks, every moderator action is listed with timestamps. If anything happens without your knowledge or permission, there’s a paper trail.
Bans
This simply lists banned users from your server. You can add notes to these users so your mod team all knows why they’re banned.
Additional Options
Now that you’ve finished the basics of setting up your Discord server, you can invite your friends, add your invite link to your social media platforms, and start building your community. There is plenty more you can do with your server, and you can tinker with it and really make your brand shine with it. Enjoy your safe and organized server!
