How to Add Bots to Your Discord Server

If you run a Discord server, you have a wide variety of options to provide neat features for your members. One of those features is bots. Customizing your server is simple once you learn how to add these bots.

This article will show you how to set up a Discord server, introduce you to the world of bots, and explain how to add bots to your Discord server (and why you might want to).

What Are Discord Bots?

Bots are simply computer programs that interact with human beings (and sometimes with other bots) to perform certain functions automatically. A website with a helpful chat window immediately opens up, offering to talk with you about their product or service; that’s a bot. If you use Reddit, you see bot interactions (beep! boop!) all the time.

Bots can be helpful or infuriating, depending on their purpose, design, and deployment. On Discord, bots provide a variety of productive and not-so-productive features to the community on the server where they “live.” You can add bots to your Discord server that help you moderate members or make your server a little more unique and fun.

For example, there are bots that play music, bots that offer amusing memes on request, bots that fetch your game stats for you, and bots that play a loud air horn noise on the channel when prompted to do so.

Finding Good Discord Bots

The Discord world is full of bots; there are thousands of freely available bots out there. There’s a list of some silly and semi-useful bots here if you like, but users who need some more serious bots can find them on the Carbonitex website. Carbonitex is one of the best repositories of Discord bots around. Another reputable repository for Discord bots is Discord Bots. A GitHub search for Discord bots will find just about everything in the public view for the truly hardcore.

Adding Bots To Your Discord Server

Adding Bots to your Discord server can be a lengthy process the first time around. Once you get the hang of it, it’s actually quite simple.

Step 1 – Turn On Administrator Access

To add bots to your Discord Server, you will have to be an Administrator of that server. If you don’t own the server, it’s probably a good idea to check with the owner before adding anything to it.

1. From your Discord home page, select the server you’d like to add the bot to (on the left-hand side of the Discord Website).
2. Once Selected, choose the drop-down menu (the server name in the top left-hand of the screen with a small down arrow next to it).
   
3. Tap Server Settings.
   
4. Tap Roles.
   
5. Click on Default Permissions.
   
6. Scroll down to the Advanced Permissions setting and toggle Administrator on.
   
7. Click Save Changes.
   

Step 2 – Get the Bots You Want

It’s important to note that depending on your Bots’ source website, you may see Invite or Add Bots. For this example, we’ll use Dyno, but the instructions may vary if you’re adding another Bot. Do remember that you will need to perform these steps for each server you own or moderate.

Here’s how to add a Bot to your Discord server:

1. Visit the website of the bot you want to add. Then, click on the option to log in.
   Note: Each source will have slightly different instructions. But overall, most follow steps similar to these.
   
2. Log in using your Discord credentials. Then, select the server where you’d like to use the bot and click Continue.
   
3. Make the selections appropriate for your server and click Authorize.
   
4. Go through the setup process.
   

If you have trouble finding your server, make sure that you are logged into Discord in the same browser you’re using for the Bots’ website. Also, verify that you are signed into the correct account.

If you want to add someone as an administrator on your server, check out this TechJunkie article on adding a new administrator.

Easy peasy!

If you’re more hardcore and want to add bots without bothering with the pretty interface, you can also add them directly. You’ll need to know the client ID of the bot, and you’ll need to be logged into your Discord server. This is the method you’ll need to use for most GitHub bots, which don’t have a web interface.

1. Open your browser and paste the following URL: https://discordapp.com/oauth2/authorize?client_id=<Bot_Client_ID>&scope=bot&permissions=0.
2. Change Bot_Client_ID in the above URL with the actual client ID of the bot you want to add.
3. You may still have to authorize the bot even though the command uses Oauth2 to do that very thing.

Managing Your Discord Bot

Now that you’ve added your bot, let’s review how you can manage it. Most bots have a dashboard located on the website with comprehensive controls for moderation. But you can make some adjustments in Discord’s settings too. To reiterate, the instructions below will vary depending on the bot you’re using.

1. Head over to the bot’s website and click on the Dashboard option.
   
2. Scroll down the page and sift through the controls that your bot offers.
   
3. Make changes as you see fit.

Again, each bot will have different instructions and different capabilities.

Authorizing Your Discord Bot

Discord is very careful with bots and sometimes requires multiple authorizations to enable one to work. Even though the platform uses Oauth2 to permit a bot to access and interact, you may still see a prompt to authorize it within the channel.

Some Popular Discord Bots

Now that you know how to add bots, what are some bots you should add? Well, only you know what kind of environment you want your server to have. Here is a list of some of the more popular Discord bots and why you might want to add them.

Dank Member displays memes and has a variety of other meme-related features.

Pancake is a basic multi-featured bot with moderation features and music playing.

Nadeko plays games, offers gambling, and has administration tools.

MedalBot lets your users record clips.

RickBot offers more than 4500 custom soundboards.

Groovy is a music bot that supports Spotify, YouTube, and Soundcloud.

Rythm is a very stable and fully functional music bot.

Mantaro is a customizable “fun” bot.

A translator is a multilingual bot that provides instant translation between more than 100 languages.

More Bot Resources

There are a lot of resources out there to help you choose, customize, and even create your own Discord bots. Here are some of the most popular and useful bot-oriented resources available on the Web to help you get the most out of your bot experience.

Discord.me is a large Discord community where users can add and promote servers, but the site’s overall mission is to “help people find online communities they love.” The site has 33 categories of servers, ranging from Military to Mature, Anime to Art, and Fitness to Furry.

An active blog keeps community members up to date, and the site features an NSFW toggle that lets you avoid (or seek out) the “after dark” servers out there.

Discordbots.org is a bot-themed Discord community with a vast array of resources for bot users. The site has thousands of bots categorized and rated and also publishes and supports its own bot creation API, available in JavaScript, Java, Python, C#/.NET, and Go variations.

This site is a goldmine of great resources and examples for bot developers.

Bastionbot.org takes an interesting philosophical position on the bot world. Rather than having a dozen bots, each running their own functions, Bastion attempts to be an all-in-one bot that can handle everything a server might need.

Bastion’s feature list includes music, games, giveaways and promotions, a suggestions channel, voting, user profiles, virtual currencies, leveling systems, a server shop, filters, searches, game stats, messaging, moderation features, emojis, “fun” features like airhorns and quotes, starboard, scheduled commands, and triggers and reaction events. Bastion is a full-featured bot that can do just about anything you want it to do, and it adds features regularly.

Carbonitex is a statistics-collecting website devoted to Discord servers and bots and is a fantastic resource for those who want to see where the action is in the server and bot playing field. You can invite Carbonitex to monitor your server and collect statistics to show where you are in the great server ecosystem.

Frequently Asked Questions

Bots are a great tool to use as a Discord server admin. Here are some more answers to your most frequently asked questions.

How do I create a Discord Server?

We actually have an article to walk you through creating a server. The process is relatively simple, and you can have multiple servers for free. This means that you can create a server for your Minecraft friends and a separate one for your Call of Duty friends.

You can even create a Discord server for business or school meetings too!

Do I have to add a bot to every server?

Yes. Let’s say you want to add the music bot to your servers; you’ll need to follow the steps above for each server.

I added a bot, but it isn’t doing anything. What’s wrong?

Depending on the bot you’ve added, you could have some issues because there’s something wrong with the bot itself. However, in most cases, you need to navigate to ‘Roles’ in your server’s settings and grant the right permissions to your mechanical helper.

Most bots have a dashboard on their website. If you’ve added the roles, but it still isn’t performing correctly, head over to the bot’s website and check out the moderator’s permissions from there. For example, the Mee6 bot is incredibly popular, but you have to toggle the Moderator permissions on from the website before it’ll do anything.

Do I have to be an Admin to add bots?

Yes, if you don’t have Administrator permissions turned on, you can’t add a bot to that server. You can always ask the owner or admins for access to these permissions. The admins reserve the option to deny you the necessary permissions depending on what you’re trying to accomplish and your relationship with them.

Can I add a bot on Discord mobile?

Yes! The desktop version is a little easier to work with than the mobile version; it is possible to add most bots to your Discord server on a mobile device.

1. Open the web browser of your choice and go to the website of the bot you’d like to add.

2. Authorize the bot and select the server where you’ll use it.