Discord servers are communities for text and voice chats, gaming, and more. These communities typically revolve around a particular interest such as movies, technology or YouTube channels that all must abide by; each Discord server also has its own rules that must be observed.
Most are public, while some require an invite link in order to join. Either way, joining can be accomplished quickly via desktop application or website.
Game servers
Discord is a popular tool among gamers for communicating through group text and voice chats, with players posting gifs, memes, screenshots and discussing their gaming experiences with friends or sharing concept art from new titles in development with their communities. Game developers also often utilize Discord for this purpose.
Discord allows users to quickly and easily create public servers for free and invite friends. Topics range from gaming, languages and study groups - you'll find something suitable here! Clicking the Explore Public Servers icon (opens in new tab) allows you to browse a comprehensive list of communities.
Discord will prompt you when creating a server to choose one of its templates or start from scratch, with templates being suitable for different types of communities. Feel free to choose one, but ensure it suits the one you select as best fits the community you intend on building. Once your server is up and running, text and voice channels can be added as necessary - either private to only server members or shared publicly within its community.
General chat
Discord isn't only for gamers. There are communities dedicated to music, education and business on Discord that you may find through its Explore Public Servers button on its homepage - you can easily locate these servers with this button! Featured servers allow you to easily visit those that have been highlighted for visibility so you can check them out more thoroughly.
These servers typically include text and voice channels to facilitate general chatting, discussion of hot topics, meme sharing, etc. Some can be very large; other may require you to receive an invite from within their community.
Servers can also feature roles that give certain users specific permissions, such as creating new text or voice channels, muzzling other users and even kick them out of a server. This feature helps keep things clean and safe on a server while giving those wanting to discuss topics uninterrupted the ability to do so without interruption by trolling users.
Community forums
Community forums are an effective way to connect like-minded individuals online. These sites typically focus on one topic, from hobbies like urban farming to more technical subjects such as engineering.
Before creating a community forum, it's essential to establish its purpose and identify who would most benefit from joining it. Doing this will allow you to select features which resonate most with your target audience while simultaneously giving your community an avenue for development and expansion.
When creating a community forum, it is imperative that the registration page be user-friendly and offer clear instructions. Ideally, users should be asked to verify their email addresses by clicking a link or agreeing with the terms of use before being automatically logged into the forums where they can start posting content and viewing other users' posts.
Business chat
Differing from Facebook or Twitter, Discord servers enable creators to build a community around themselves and their work, as well as offering exclusive deals and promotions for fans. This forms a positive feedback loop by encouraging fans to support the creator further through Discord's boost system (similar to Patreon) which gives rewards like custom emoji and stickers, an animated server banner, private threads, as well as better audio/video quality.
Discord's platform is free to join, but they also offer a subscription service with additional features called Discord Nitro. Although not immune from problematic content, Discord's team are working on ways to protect its members through verification levels and user questions during membership screening.
To create your own server in Discord, first open up the app and tap on the three stacked lines at the top-left of the screen to access its servers menu. From here, use the plus sign on the left to create either a public or private server and send invite links out for other players to join.
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