Hello everyone! With this quarter moving to being remote, many professors and students alike are looking to move to online platforms such as Discord for discussion and to stay connected. One of the great benefits of using Discord is bots! Discord Bots are used to make day to day action in your server easier!
Bots can be programmed to play music, send messages and assign roles to anyone who joins. Bots are also very helpful in administering your Discord server if you’re away or idle. This is part one of a two part blog series on how to set up Discord bots in your server!
Getting Started
- Log into Discord
- Navigate to this website: https://discordapp.com/developers/applications . This is the applications site aspect of Discord where you can create bots for your server. Click on “new application” to begin.
- Once you do that, you have several options. You can name the bot, add an icon and have a description if you’d like.
Bot Setup
After you select your application, navigate to the “Bot” section underneath the settings. From there, you have multiple options. You can give the Bot a username, which also serves as its actual name. You can change the profile photo of it as well! Once you’re satisfied with the name and appearance, you can move on to the next section.
- Click the copy button to get the token for your Discord bot. You can also click on Click To Reveal Token to see the token typed out. The token is the password for your newly created bot. Treat this the same way you would any password! Don’t share it with anyone- this would allow your bot to be hacked and permissions to be changed. I blocked the token out here for privacy!
- In the concerning case that the password has been leaked, you can click the “regenerate” under the token section to create a new token password.
- Make sure that the public section is checked so that you can add it to your server post completion.
Congrats! Your Bot is created!
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Implementing Your Bot
- Create an invite url.
- Go back to the application page
- The link is here – https://discordapp.com/developers/applications
- Your bot, if created correctly, will show up on this page. Click on it.
- Navigate to the “oAuth2”
- Check the bot box underneath the Scopes box.
- Now, navigate to the “Bot Permissions” section. Click on the permissions that you are requiring for your bot to work underneath this section. I would recommend against the bot having admin permissions, just in case something happens.
- The URL that is created at the end of this process is that you will be using to implement your Discord bot! To do this, copy and paste the URL into your search browser
- You will be asked to verify that you want to give your bot the permissions you allowed. From there, you will be given a drop down menu asking you what server you’d like to place your bot in. Once you make your selection, the bot will be added to your server!
Quick Sidenote – What is OAuth2?
OAuth2 allows application devs to create applications that “utilize authentication and data from the Discord API”. API stands for application programming interface, and refers to a tool set that programmers can use to help them create and build software. In this case, you’re using the Discord API to create a bot for yourself. The authentication for your bot is the token password discussed earlier in this tutorial!
Some Important Things To Remember About Bots
- These bots can not accept normal invites to servers, which should be beneficial to those of you who are using the bot for just one class or organization.
- Bots can not be added as a friend or invited to any group DMs.
Happy bot creating!
