How To Set Up Your Own Discord Bot: A Guide [v13 update]
Step 1: Go to https://discord.com/developers/applications
Make sure you are signed in to discord. On the top right hand corner, you will see a button that says New Application. Get to clicking!
Step 2: You will be asked for a name. This could be any name, but preferably the one you want your bot to have. Make sure it has a cool name, like Potato Queen, or Jack the Ripped Bot.
Once you have done that, click Create.
Step 3: You will come to a page that shows all the General Information. But you have not created your bot yet! This is just the application page. You can put in your App Icon, Description and the likes, before clicking on Bot at the side bar.
Step 4: You should reach a page with a button that says Add Bot. Well, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and click it!
A whole new page will pop up, with information about your new bot. Remember, you can’t destroy a bot, so make sure you’re definitely wanting a bot when you’re doing this.
From here, you can see your bot’s username as well as its profile picture. You can change it if you want.
IMPORTANT: There is also something called Token. YOU SHOULD NEVER SHOW THIS TO ANYONE ELSE. It is the one thing that will bring your bot to life (it basically controls your bot) and if it’s out in the open, it is best to regenerate a new one.
When you scroll down, you will see Authorization Flow. This is where you can choose to make your bot public or private. Making it public means that others can add it to their own servers, without your help. If it’s private, only YOU can add this bot to servers.
Step 5: Invite your bot into your server.
The link to do this should be: https://discord.com/oauth2/authorize?client_id=[clientidhere]&scope=bot&permissions=[permissionnumber]
An example is: https://discord.com/oauth2/authorize?client_id=707835242475421767&scope=bot&permissions=8 [this has admin permissions]
or you can just use: https://discord.com/oauth2/authorize?client_id=707835242475421767&scope=bot
And you’re done! At least with the application part.
NOW WE MOVE ON TO THE CODING PART. [Note: This is in JS because I love JS. Someday I might do a guide for Python too but we will see.]
The basic things you need:
1. Visual Studio Code
2. Node JS
You can see how to download either one from HERE.
Then, you will need to download discord.js.
Create a folder for your discord bot things, and then open up Visual Studio Code.
Create a new file called index.js and this will be your main page, where you get your bot running. The basic codes inside it would be:
TOKEN: Remember that token that I said you can’t tell anyone? Yeah, put it in there like client.login(”IWEUTWEITU”) where that keysmash is your token.
From here, if you’re using Visual Studio Code, just go to your console.
NOTE: If you do not know where to find the console, follow this:
Click Terminal from the top tab > New Terminal. This will pull up the console for you.
Make sure that the directory of your terminal is the place where your index.js file is at. If not, you can always use ls to list the different folders in that directory and cd to change into that directory as shown below:
My terminal was in the Github folder and I used ls to list all the folders in the Github folder. From there, I can see the cafe-bot folder where my hello.js file is located in. So I used cd cafe-bot to move into that folder.
From there, type npm install discord.js
Once you’re done with that, once again, type node index.js.
[Sometimes you might run into errors that let you know that “The term node is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet”. This either means that you have NOT installed Node JS, in which you can go to this post to see how to do it HERE
OR you might have some issues with directories in which you can look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg4t48BPmh8]
You should see “Bot is ready!” and with that, your bot is up!
im trying to teach myself to code and i made my first bot today! he's based on tutter from bear in the big blue house and he responds to different crimes with quotes from the trüllbus monster factory episode. more features to come, this is just what i did today :)
