Discord is a fantastic platform to help you create your server, and in this guide, we’re going to take a look at popular and cool server types to help you out! Let’s get started!
1. Introductions Channel
An introductions channel is always fundamentally important to helping your server’s members get to know each other. By including this channel, members will be more likely to take the first step into the community and introduce themselves. You can also make this a requirement before members are allowed “into” your server, or are allowed access the rest of the server’s channels, but you will have less members this way. If you’d prefer a community of highly-engaged members who love partaking in discussions and chat, then I’d recommend adding a rule which only allows access to members if they introduce themselves in the Introductions channel first.
2. Create Dedicated Voice Channels for Specific Interests/Games
If your server is within a certain niche, then it can be helpful to create dedicated voice channels for sub-niches, games or interests. For example, if your server is dedicated to gaming, then you could have a few voice channels dedicated to specific games. One channel could be for Cyberpunk 2077, another could be for your server’s favourite game, and so forth. If you’re not sure which would be the most popular, you could create a poll in your server, asking members which games they’d like a voice channel for. To garner interest before this, you could also just ask members in your server’s announcements channel, and then see which game is mentioned most frequently.
3. General Discussions
I’d recommend adding a general discussion channel in order to facilitate conversations of a more general kind. This can help spur new conversation in various areas or niches, which may not be related to your server’s topic. You can create a poll by using a poll bot, such as the Reaction Roles bot. To use these types of bots, you simply type a command containing your question plus the answers, and the bot will send a message into the channel, along with reactions for that message. Each reaction will equate to a particular answer. For example, the checkbox emoji could mean “Yes” or a red circle could mean “No” and so forth. By including an area where completely random and general discussion can be had, members can have a place in your server where they can chat about events and other general topics without needing to have these dedicated to a certain channel within your server. Having a general channel can be great for boosting conversation too, and helping members get to know each other also!
4. Host Events
You can also host events on your server in order to help members get to know each other better. For example, you could host an event in your server’s voice channel during a particular weeknight, for instance, where server members can chat with each other. Or you could play a certain game during other events too. To spruce up events, you could also order virtual food, this is a lot of fun, and I’d definitely recommend trying it out for voice channel events and so forth!
5. Make Regular Announcements
In order to help keep your server’s members informed about the latest news with regards your server and its upkeep, it’s always important to make regular announcements in the server too. You can do this by creating a dedicated announcements channel, and posting updates you wish to make within this channel, for instance. You could also ask members to react to your message, if you wish to find out if they’re interested in a proposed idea for example. If you want to create a poll to find out more about what your server’s members would like to see in the future, you can also do so in the announcements channel too.
6. Add Important Roles
To help maintain your server, having members assign themselves roles is also fundamentally important to helping the upkeep and running of your server. For example, if a certain event is being held, you can ping members who would like to partake in that type of event, eg: if you’re hosting a book club session and members are interested in that, they might have a book-related role. You can have members automatically assign themselves roles by using the Reaction Roles Discord bot, which allows members to simply react to a message in order to receive a role.
7. Ask a Question of The Day to Members
In order to increase engagement and help your members get to know each other, you could also ask a question of the day, which could be related to your server’s topic or just a general question. There are bots that exist, which have a whole repository of questions waiting to be asked, and you can ask the bot to provide a question in case you need some inspiration. You could also just do this weekly or twice a week too, if you prefer! I’ve found asking questions to be pretty effective in helping engage members and participate in discussions!
8. Memes Channel
A memes channel is also a great place to allow members to post their favourite memes, GIFs and inside jokes so that they can share them with others. While memes may already be posted in other channels, it can help to have a channel solely dedicated to them too. Some people may prefer muting this if memes aren’t their thing, and that means most meme-worthy posts will be added to this channel instead.
9. Include Bots
Bots can be a fantastic way to help entertain and delight server members, such as meme bots, YouTube bots and so forth. These bots add extra functionality to a server, allowing members to react to messages with GIFs and stickers, provide YouTube videos and so much more! If members would prefer to keep all bot commands to a specific channel, I’d recommend creating a separate channel to do this. That way, members who wish to try out various bot commands can do so in this channel, while not interrupting conversations of members in other channels.
10. Include Meta Information in Channels
If your server doesn’t have its own accompanying website or social media profiles, and it solely exists as a Discord server, then it can help to place all meta-information about your server (such as frequently asked questions, rules, etc) within channels. Many server owners can forget this, so make sure to try this out if server members are continually asking the same questions, for example. You could add all frequently asked questions to one channel and call it #faqs, then refer members to this if they ask any of the questions which you’ve already answered previously. Information about the server such as rules and so forth can also be placed in their own channels too. Doing this helps keeps your server organised and running smoothly!
Discord Server Ideas: The Ultimate List
Hopefully you’ve found some Discord server ideas!
Thanks so much for reading, I hope that you’ve found some great Discord server ideas now! If you’re looking to add a revamp to your server, you could also try recreating a server theme also! I’ve written an article on some cool Discord server themes, so make sure to check it out if you’re interested! If you have any other comments or suggestions, make sure to drop them in the comments below, as I’d love to read them! Thanks again, and wishing you the best with your Discord server! This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional. © 2021 Susan W
