Discord Patterns

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How to make a giveaways community with the "REX Network" template on Discord

Creating your giveaways server with the template "REX Network" in 3 steps

Use the server template by clicking here.
A new tab opens. If you are already running the discord client, the rest of the tutorial continue inside it.
Complete the fields
If you are not logged in with your discord account or you don’t have one, you will have to either log in or create a new account by filling the fields:
1. A valid email address (you will receive an email confirming your account creation later)
2. A username: the others members of your community will see it, take your time to choose it.
3. A password for your account
4. Accept the terms of service
5. Click on “Continue” to create your account

Once you have clicked on “Continue” or you were already logged, you can set up your new community: Community creation

The first field with the camera allow you to set your community picture. Everyone will be able to see it. Click on the camera and choose a picture that symbolizes your community purpose. Complete your community name and click on “Create a server”.
3. Start to use your discord server
Discord interface pop out and your can see your new server ! To the right, you can see the connected members : right-click on your name and give you some roles by hovering the “role menu”. For example, you can give you the @everyone role.
You can now invite friends on your community ! For this, click on your community’s name in the top left corner and then on “Invite People”. Copy paste the link to your friends.

Now that you set your server, you can read the guide below to get the most out of discord and grow your discord server !

Tips for growing a discord server

Advertising your discord server

You are looking desperately for members for your new community ?

First tip: don’t try to invite random people to your server just to increase the member count. You only want people to join if they are actually interested in the server. This will lead to continued success and high-quality discussion. The main goal of this section is to make it so that people who are looking for a server about your topic will be able to easily find your server!

Listing sites - Check out the resources at the bottom of this guide; there are a few server listing sites well referenced that allow you to share your server.
External Outreach - Look for subreddits/forums/other resources that share the same topic as your Discord server. Make sure to let users know that you've created a Discord server all about the topic that they enjoy! (Make sure to do this politely though; nobody likes someone spamming links!). Depending on the responses, you might need to make some changes on your server if you want the external communities to support you. Do it! It's very important to get the current communities for the topic involved!
Don't spam your invite link on random Discord servers! - This is extremely important. If you just ask random people to join, and they aren't interested in the topic, there is a high chance they will either a) leave or b) troll. You don't want either of these. What you want is for all (or at least most) of your new members to be people that actually care about the topic. Don't be discouraged if it grows slowly at first! It's better to have 10 members that care than 1,000 members that don't.
Get Involved with your own server - Don't step out of the community to try to fill an "owner" role. Just be part of the community, because the best and most reliable source of advertising is people telling their friends.

Make your server interesting (and keep your members)

In order to keep your server members, you will need events to give people initiatives.

Events

Let’s break them up into 3 types.

Type 1: Strengthening your purpose

You’re running a game server? Game tournaments! You’re running an art server? Work exchange! You’re running an anime server? What about dub challenge?

This type of events highly depends on your server’s purpose and also resources available to you. They are highly effective but at the same time consume a lot of your time and effort so you should keep a balance between these events and regular activities.

Type 2: Generic engagement activities

Minigames (like Cards Agains Humnity, UNO, skribbl.io et Webopoly, surely you’ll find more) as well as other small events (Like movie night, karaoke, etc) can be used to keep your members busy. They require less effort than type 1 events, but they won’t bring in new members, and there is a limit on how many you can do: Too many minigames can dilute your purpose and annoy members which may lead to losing members.

Type 3 : Organiser des tirages au sort (les “giveaways”)

Giveaways with attractive prizes will surely make existing members happy and bring in new people when used with proper advertisement. However, we all know that attractive prizes, like steam games or gift cards, are costly. So you can’t really do them often.

But after all, you can’t do events all the time. So there’s also…

Regular activities

Chat, obviously! But chat about what? You certainly need responsible staff to start topics and engage in conversations. Members need to feel that...

You care about them
They have certain value in the server
They enjoy staying in your server
They have things to talk about
If you have a specific topic: You (and your staff) are well knowledged of it

Tips

Don't separate the "Owner" in the member sidebar. Usually, a role should only be "displayed separately" or "hoisted" if people need to be able to easily see who is in that role. For example, it's usually good to hoist "Moderators" so that someone can easily ping them if needed. However, hoisting roles like "Owner" just looks narcissistic.
Don't use any kind of "levels" or "exp" system. Don't give points or award roles for chatting. This is the quickest and easiest way to drown out any real conversation. People are much more engaged in a community if every who is talking is talking because they are interested in the server, not just because they want points. If you are having trouble keeping people engaged, hold events that relate to the topic!
Only have as many moderators as the server needs. It might be tempting to start adding a bunch of moderators as soon as there is some activity, or as soon as the first bad thing happens, but don't be too quick. Make sure that you completely and fully trust your moderators before adding them, and don't add too many. Early on, you probably only need one or two mods just to make sure that you have all timezones covered. A decent estimate for moderator counts is 1 mod per 1000 members, and 1 admin per 10 mods. This varies a lot based on the nature of the server of course.
Do not advertise to random people, nor on random servers, nor reward people for inviting friends. Unsolicited advertising breaks Discord's Terms of Service, so if you send random invites, or even have a system that encourages people to do that, you're breaking the ToS and your server and/or account could be shut down! Follow the rules!
Think about why YOU would want to join a server. Don't follow certain practices or add certain things just because you saw someone else do it, do things because they make your server something you want to be a part of! This is something that so many servers mess up; they add bots or certain channels just because they saw another server with them and not because it actually makes the server more enjoyable.

Ressources

Server Listing Websites

A small selection of listing websites. Publish your server on them by writing an elegant description which will attract new members.

Listing servers

A small selection of discord servers that allows you to advertise your community

Subreddits

Moderation/management bots

This tutorial is based on jagrosh's tips and austinhuang's tutorial.