This guide is still in-progress
Hello! I'm jagrosh#4824! I'm writing this guide to try to help new server owners set up and grow their servers, which is a commonly-requested topic. It's very easy to go about this the wrong way, so it's best to be prepared and make smart decisions so that your community can flourish!
You might be wondering: why am I qualified to write this guide? Excellent question! Well, I've created several successful Discord servers, including the Monster Hunter Gathering Hall (14,000+ members, game community) and a bot support server (3,000+ members). I also help moderate several large servers, and I am a Discord partner. Finally, I am very familiar with the technical aspects of Discord, which are useful for setting up servers and permissions.
This is an important question. Just because you can make a server doesn't mean you should. When you're making your server, make sure to ask yourself these questions:
- Does this server have one specific topic? If your server is a "generic gaming server" or "generic public server" or "random server" or "memes" or any variation, then it is not going to grow. Frankly, no one is interested in joining a server that doesn't have a defined topic. If you take a look at the biggest and most-popular servers on Discord, they all have a specific topic, like "Overwatch" or "World of Warcraft Druids" or "Discord API". If you want your server to become popular, you must pick a specific topic.
- Do any other servers for this topic exist? Once you've decided on a topic, you need to figure out if a server for that topic already exists. For example, don't make a server about "League of Legends," because one already exists. However, it's possible that there doesn't exist a server for "League of Legends Demacia Lore," so that would be a perfectly-fine topic to create a server for. (If you don't know if a server already exists, see the "Resources" section at the bottom of this document)
- Does the topic benefit from having a Discord server? For some topics, there is no benefit to having a Discord server. Discord is great for real-time communication via text and voice. Make sure that the topic is one that can be discussed in these ways.
- Do you need to own the server? This is probably the most important question. Obviously, you're here because you want to set up a server, advertise it, and grow a community. The question is, would you be willing to give ownership and all permissions to someone else if it meant that the community would grow better? If you would not be willing to give ownership to improve the community, you need to stop reading this guide right now and delete the server. Servers aren't things to "show off" because they are popular; they are communities of real people that want to communicate, and you need to care more about that community than about who "owns" the server itself. This is something you must accept if you want to create a community: that if the community would do better without you, you need to be able to give it up to someone who will perform better.
If you've answered these questions according to the guidelines, you're ready to start setting up the server!
coming soon
- Listing Sites - Check out the resources at the bottom of this guide; there are a few server listing sites that I highly recommend.
- External Outreach - Look for subreddits/forums/other resources that share the same topic as your Discord server. Make sure to let users know that you've created a Discord server all about the topic that they enjoy! (Make sure to do this politely though; nobody likes someone spamming links!). Depending on the responses, you might need to make some changes on your server if you want the external communities to support you. Do it! It's very important to get the current communities for the topic involved!
- Don't spam your invite link on random Discord servers! - This is extremely important. If you just ask random people to join, and they aren't interested in the topic, there is a high chance they will either a) leave or b) troll. You don't want either of these. What you want is for all (or at least most) of your new members to be people that actually care about the topic. Don't be discouraged if it grows slowly at first! It's better to have 10 members that care than 1,000 members that don't.
- Get Involved with your own server - Don't step out of the community to try to fill an "owner" role. Just be part of the community, because the best and most reliable source of advertising is people telling their friends.
These are just some generic tips that usually correlate with success.
- Don't separate the "Owner" in the member sidebar. Usually, a role should only be "displayed separately" or "hoisted" if people need to be able to easily see who is in that role. For example, it's usually good to hoist "Moderators" so that someone can easily ping them if needed. However, hoisting roles like "Owner" just looks narcisistic.
- Don't use any kind of "levels" or "exp" system. Don't give points or award roles for chatting. This is the quickest and easiest way to drown out any real conversation. People are much more engaged in a community if every who is talking is talking because they are interested in the server, not just because they want points. If you are having trouble keeping people engaged, hold events that relate to the topic!
- Only have as many moderators as the server needs. It might be tempting to start adding a bunch of moderators as soon as there is some activity, or as soon as the first bad thing happens, but don't be too quick. Make sure that you completely and fully trust your moderators before adding them, and don't add too many. Early on, you probably only need one or two mods just to make sure that you have all timezones covered. A decent estimate for moderator counts is 1 mod per 1000 members, and 1 admin per 10 mods. This varies a lot based on the nature of the server of course.
- https://www.discordservers.com/ - This is likely the most popular listing site, and allows you to provide a small description about your server.
- https://www.carbonitex.net/discord/servers - Carbonitex is great for keeping various stats about your server, including members, activity, and messages. The list here is also often used to rank servers by member count.
- http://discord.me - This site is great for getting a customized invite link that can easily distinguish your server.
- blargbot - http://blargbot.xyz/ - This bot can be used to customize your server in almost any way you can imagine. It has a strong custom command implementation that lets you make whatever commands your server is going to need. It can log messages and record moderation actions, and even have some basic automoderation if needed.
- Vortex - https://bots.discord.pw/bots/240254129333731328 - This is a basic moderation and auto-moderation bot. It doesn't require any setup for the basic commands (using native Discord permissions for its checks), and it's easy to set up some basic auto-moderation for preventing spam, advertisements, and raids.
- (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ✧･ﾟ✧spoo.py✧･ﾟ✧ヽ(◕ヮ◕)ﾉ - https://bots.discord.pw/bots/109379894718234624 - spoo.py is great for keeping tabs on members. It can remember what names members used to have, when they were last online, and more.
- TradeBot - https://www.discordtrading.xyz/ - This bot is extremely useful if your server has any kind of trading or listing needed. It's easy to use and can display everything cleanly on the website.
- blargbot - http://blargbot.xyz/ - Similar to its moderation capabilities, it can be used to provide information to your users. You can make it announce joins or leaves, or make tags for common topics.
No. You don't need any game bots. Please don't use bots as a means to increase server activity.
- https://www.carbonitex.net/discord/bots - Carbonitex features many bots that have been determined to meet a certain quality standard.
- https://bots.discord.pw/ - A diverse directory of Discord bots. This site lists almost all publically-hosted bots.
- Discord Guide - http://discordguide.us/ - Useful resources for some technical aspects of Discord. This site (or their discord server) might be worth linking in your server's "rules" channel to help out your members that might be new to Discord