Creator to Server Admin 101

Starting up your Discord server is an exciting leap in turning your audience into a thriving community. With our “Creator to Admin” article series, we’ll make sure your Discord experience is as smooth as possible.

To start, we’ll be explaining some important Discord lingo and sharing a few helpful resources that dive deeper on the subject of Moderation.

Words Words, and More Words

You might’ve noticed we tend to use our own jargon here at Discord, and knowing what’s what is crucial to building your future community.? Let’s quickly review a few short excerpts of our Discord Dictionary so you can get up to speed in no time! (Sadly, there’s no physical Discord Dictionary… yet.)

Server: What Discord is all about: your server is your community hub. On other social or content platforms, you might have a channel or a page where all your content resides. On Discord, your server is the house party in which all of your community activities live.

Channels: Where conversation actually take place within a server. These can include any mix of Text, Voice, Forum and Stage channels. You can set up up to 500(!) channels total, but you’ll likely never need to go that far — we recommend you create and name your channels in a way that makes its purpose clear to community members.

Permissions: These determine what certain users can do, such as allowing @everyone being able to post messages while only Moderators are allowed to delete them. As the server creator, you can set up your Permissions which allow members to have specific privileges or access in your server, even including granting certain users more moderation-like powers. The possibilities for Permissions are vast, so head over here to learn more about ‘em. Bring a snack or some water — it can be a lot!

Further Reading: Discord Moderation Deep Dive

You might be familiar with moderation tools on other platforms, like blocking, muting, reporting and restricting. Actions like these also exist on Discord, but you’ll likely be having a much more hands-on experience when tackling the moderation of your Discord community. Your server’s moderators play an important role within a community as they help ensure your server is a e space where your audience feels safe and can find belonging among like-minded future friends.

As you build your server, it’s important that you feel comfortable stepping into the role of a moderator, or finding friends or colleagues who can handle taking on the role. Once you’ve decided who among you and your trusted friends are going to be moderating (which can be more than one person), check out Discord’s Moderator Academy! This is an in-depth site similar to the Creator Portal where you can get all of the resources you need to feel empowered as a new moderator.

Look at you, future moderator! Now you’re  more in-the-know on Discord speak, and you’re more prepared for the moderation needs of your new Discord server. After you’ve created your future server, make sure to check out “Creator to Server Admin 201,” an article that covers which features on Discord you can use to improve your server experience for community members.