An Introduction to Discord
posted 12/1/2021 by Maxim Grin
You’ve probably heard of social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and a whole bunch of other platforms, but might not have heard of Discord, let alone seen its logo.
Despite that, Discord is a very popular voice, video, and direct text chat platform with an average of 150 million monthly users. From direct messaging to servers with hundreds of thousands of people, Discord almost has it all.
Discord can be used for a variety of purposes: you can simply chat with a friend as if you’re texting or video calling them, you can also join servers freely to find more people to talk to. Discord is now able to be used as a google classroom substitute with the new school hubs feature, not only managing classes but also clubs, giving a place for people to ask questions from home and talk about the awesome (or not-so-awesome) test coming up. And by being available on both phone and desktop (I’ll provide a link below), the platform only becomes more accessible.
So how do you use Discord? It sounds very simple: create an account, make some friends, join a server. However, there’s a lot more depth to that. And depending on whether you’re on a desktop or your phone, the experience is slightly different.
To add a friend on your phone, you first open the app, and then you need to show your server list by swiping right - this shows all the servers you’re in or the group chats that you’re a part of, but in the bottom row is where you’ll find an icon of someone waving (look below). By pressing on that icon you will see your friends list. In the top right corner is where you’ll see a silhouette of a person with a plus sign (look below), press on that and you’ll be able to send someone a friend request. To add your friend, you have to type in their username (it is case sensitive) and put in a code of special numbers given to your friend (this is in case there are multiple people with the same username).
To add a friend on a desktop, it’s fairly similar. Your server list is already showing, so make sure that you have the Discord logo in the top left corner selected and press friends. You can then look in the top row where you’ll see a green button saying “Add Friend”. Then do the same thing as mentioned on the phone.
Once you send the request, your friend has to approve it, and once you have a friend added, you can send them direct messages instantly.
Now, let’s look at creating a server. Scroll to the very bottom of your server list (unless there is no list) and find the plus button. You can then select to create your own server from scratch or use a template. You’ll then go through a simple process of naming the server and even giving it a picture. That’s it! You can add people as you wish and also kick people out. This is also how you can join a server. After pressing the plus button, you have to paste the link to the server that’s given to you by someone on the server or by the person who created it. But if they give you an invite to the server, simply pressing the join button will put you inside the server instantly.
To add people to your server on your phone, you need to have your server list open and select the invite button under the name of the server you want to invite your friends to. Then you can either invite them by selecting them in your friends list or copy a link and give it to them or anyone else (especially useful if you want to promote a server). On the desktop, you just have the extra step of selecting the drop-down menu and then pressing the invite button.
After a while, you’ll probably be a part of a large number of servers (100 servers is the max), so it’s best that you keep everything organized. With the list open, you can press and hold on them and drag them along the list, and to make a folder you hover a server over another, automatically creating the folder (you can even color the folder).
There are some other good things to keep in mind, so here are a few tips and tricks to make your Discord experience just that bit better:
Keep your most-used servers at the top of the list. If you don’t move them, they’ll eventually scroll down to the bottom as you add more servers, and cause you to scroll down to find your server every time you open Discord.
If you get tired of the notification sound, you can put yourself on do not disturb mode and you’ll never get an audial notification again (it’ll also confuse others on why you’re online 24/7)
If you don’t like the white dot next to each server on the list, you can mute the server by either right-clicking on the server, selecting “mute server”, and then “until I turn it back on”. On your phone, you have to select the drop-down menu, press “notifications” and then mute the server. You can also unmute it at any time.
If you ever want to mark every message in the server as read, you can right-click on the server and select “mark as read”, or go to the drop-down and find the “Mark as read” button. This is useful for getting rid of the directed notifications when someone uses @everyone or @your username, also known as “pinging”.
Enable 2-factor authentication (2FA); this makes it extra hard for someone to hack into your account but requires you to make one extra step to log in after putting in your password. If you have an authenticator app such as Authy, you’ll be getting the maximum amount of security possible on Discord. But you can increase your security by knowing the different types of scams on Discord. If you ever fall for a scam, instantly get yourself away from the source of the problem (the account), and change your password. But to make it harder to fall into that scenario, here are the three most common types to watch out for:
Baiting (someone trying to get you on their friends list with an inappropriate bait)
Scamming (giving you a link to a free Discord nitro giveaway)
Fake Discord QR (never scan a QR code on Discord unless it is from Discord itself [only used when signing in]).
And that’s a quick intro to Discord. It’s very easy to pick up and there’s lots more to explore than what was mentioned in this blog post, so be adventurous! A simple Google search on how to use Discord bots can lead to hours of research and testing. Learning how to use a bot like Groovy or Carl-bot is a good place to start. There are plenty of things to find out including easter eggs (for example, the Discord logo’s name is Clyde), and handy features.