This is not a tutorial but a guide on how to get started building your Discord server with bots.
So, you’ve found yourself in the land of the blockchain where gamer slang has become the norm and cartoons make legitimate profile pictures. Odds are you probably belong to a Discord server or two if you’re active within the blockchain ecosystem. Discord is a staple to the Web 3.0 community.
“What is Web3.0?” To put it simply, it’s the third wave of the internet. Web 1.0 gave us static web pages, Web 2.0 established more of an information flow between site users and site owners, and Web 3.0 seeks to create more of a decentralized internet where data is openly shared. Web 3.0 communities need a way to establish relationships with their customers, so they lean on the forward-thinking technology of Discord. I recently began building out my own server. Here are my tips from the experience.
Explore
Find out more about what you know. There are a handful of crypto projects I am currently paying attention to, so I started there to get an idea of how to build out my server. I noticed how I was gaining access to the servers. Sometimes I clicked through to discord links I found on Twitter, other times I found the link of the project’s website, and sometimes a friend texted the link to me directly. Twitter seems to be where most people find Discord servers. Each of these are marketing channels.
Okay, you found a server you like. Play around with the server. Ask yourself these questions:
- What do their rules include?
- Does the project bake marketing into their list of rules?
- How did the server verify my identity?
- Do I like how this server verified my identity?
- What do I have access to inside the server and why?
- Do I feel safe in this server?
- What does this server have in common with others I’ve experienced?
Asking questions like these will influence the direction you take with building your server. You can decide whether or not your project needs an FAQ or a gallery channel. I found it useful that most discords have a welcome channel as well as a channel for announcements. Support channels are also crucial if your project involves selling products.
Research Bots
Bots are part of the beauty of Discord. It took me a while to recognize their true value, but the utility of bots is endless. Why? You can build a bot for whatever you might need. Yes, you will need to learn the technology in order to do so, but if you have any experience in web development, you should be able to figure it out.
I need my server to verify users in a very specific way. When I figured out what I needed, I started researching whether or not this verification bot already existed. Search popular discord bot listings when you’re getting started. Pay attention to the amount of users and reviews a bot has. Obviously the more users it has, the more you can trust it. If you can’t find anything, you might need to create your own bot, but trust that someone already had your idea. It took me hours to find projects using bots that were similar to what I needed. Taking the time to do the research helped me decide whether or not I need to create my own bot. In my case, I do need to create my own, but now I have more resources at my disposal.
Next steps
It’s time to get my hands dirty. The server exists, but there’s nothing inside. It still needs a handful of channels, copy to go along with each channel, a verification bot, and channel permissions. I’m sure plenty more tasks will come up as I build, but it’s important to establish a direction.
As for programming the bot, I need to figure out which language I will use in development. I hope to lean on my JavaScript or Ruby on Rails knowledge with this being my first bot build, but I’ll have to see. In the meantime, if you have questions about your Discord sever, please reach out and I’ll do my best to answer. If you have any experience building a Discord bot and want to chat, that’d be cool too.
