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Let’s start with the obvious question: what is Patreon? In case you are unfamiliar with Patreon, it is a subscription service for content creators similar to YouTube Memberships and Twitch Subscriptions. Supporters ( hereby referred to as “patrons”) can pay a monthly fee to access content from creators they are supporting. This private content can cover a wide range of content including text posts, polls, videos, images, merchandise, and more. The possibilities are truly endless and you, as a content creator, have control over how much value you place on the content you produce and distribute over Patreon.
Patreon also uses tiered platforms based upon monetary commitment. For example, let’s say you are a comic book creator that can generate an entire comic in a month’s time. You could charge patrons $5 to access works in progress, maybe snippets of the story you’re writing, or behind the scenes streams of you working on an anticipated page or panel. At the next $10 tier, patrons can gain access to the whole comic as a reward, and maybe even access polls to help you decide what to do next. Further, a $25 reward could be that patrons have complete access to your entire library, or get a physical edition of your comic book sent to them! The ideas are endless when it comes to what kind of rewards you can offer your patrons.
In fact, one of the new ways to explore rewards systems for patrons is via Discord.
For content creators that use platforms like Patreon, providing rewards to patrons is an absolute necessity because it directly benefits those who choose to support you. One of the simpler rewards creators can provide patrons is a Discord reward system automatically managed by the Patreon Bot. An example of such an award allows you to assign one or more roles to patrons in your Discord server based upon their subscription tier on Patreon. Once they have their designated roles, you can utilize channel permissions to provide your supporters with exclusive access to aspects of your server like hidden channels or perhaps even hoist them in the sidebar of your Discord server as an added bonus. This gives them closer access to you as a creator as well as your content and your community. This, in turn, can make them feel appreciated as support and perhaps allow them to see a direct impact of their support on your content.
The first step to setting up Discord Rewards on Patreon is to have a Patreon account. Once you’ve started building your Patreon page (or have one completed), you’ll need to head into your “Tiers” section of your page.
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Once in the “Tiers” section, pick the tier you’d like to grant the access to your rewards in your Discord server. We recommend that this should be the lowest tier you’d allow patrons to subscribe at in order to receive a special role in a Discord server that we are presuming is public. Once you’ve selected your chosen tier, you’ll need to connect your Patreon to Discord.
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Now, let’s make this reward a reality with the following steps:
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Please note, if you created your server that you plan on adding to your Patreon, you’ll have no trouble finding it in the server list mentioned in Step 4. If you’ve had a friend, moderator, or maybe even a community manager create your server, you might not see it in this list. Make sure you have the Manage Server permission in order to see it. If you don’t, double check with the server owner and have them add it to one of your roles in order to successfully connect to Patreon.
*Unless you are using the channel description for verification instructions rather than an automatic greeter message.
If you want to use the remove unverified role method, you will need a bot that can automatically assign a role to a user when they join.
Verification Actions
Once you decide whether you want to add or remove a role, you need to decide how you want that action to take place. Generally, this is done by typing a bot command in a channel, typing a bot command in a DM, or clicking on a reaction. The differences between these methods are shown below.
In order to use the command in channel method, you will need to instruct your users to remove the Unverified role or to add the Verified role to themselves.
With your Patreon page successfully linked with your Discord server, you may notice this message in Patreon:
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To finalize reward set-up, you need to create the actual roles. We recommend creating a different role for each of the Patreon tiers you have and distinguishing the roles by naming them after the tiers’ name or the amount of money pledged by patrons of each tier. For example, if you have a $50 per month Patreon tier named Top Contributor, you could name the corresponding reward role either “$50” or “Top Contributor.” This usually works out the most suitably for future rewards, because you can easily distinguish your followers who send $5 a month, versus those sending $50 a month, and change role permissions accordingly if you are offering them different levels of Discord access.
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Remember that it is important to keep the Patreon Bot’s role above all the other roles we make for this purpose so it can help manage them.
Now that your tier roles are in the server, there should be no more red warning text on the Patreon Tier Creation page. If there is, give it a quick refresh. The disappearance of this text means that you can now check the box “Gives patrons access to selected Discord roles.” If you are using multiple roles for each tier of your Patreon for organization in your server, make sure they’re all added. After setting your channels and permissions spoken about in the next step, double check that the correct role in your Discord server is associated with the proper tier on your Patreon page.
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Success! You’ve completed the Patreon and Discord integration! Now lets establish accessibility levels.
At this point, you’ll want to build a structure to your server for these new tier roles. Head back to the channel list and decide how you’d like to reward your different tiers. Do you want each tier to have their own channel category, or do you want one channel category with different channels designated to different tiers? Make sure to give each category and/or channel permissions associated with each role that you want to have access to that area.
We have an based upon the channel list image below to see some of our recommendations in action. This example utilizes one channel category for all patrons, but gives certain patron tiers different levels of access.
You’ll notice Patreon allows you to assign users multiple roles when they subscribe to a tier. This makes it handy to ensure your private channels and categories are easier to manage across the different role tiers. In our provided example you’ll see that all patrons have access to an exclusive general text and voice channel to talk to each other regardless of tiers. However, different tier levels are given access to different additional perks such as sharing social media links for the creator to follow back, polls for future content, and a VIP text and voice chat to better talk to the creator they’re supporting.
Markdown is also supported in an embed. Here is an image to showcase an example of these properties:
Example image to showcase the elements of an embed
An important thing to note is that embeds also have their limitations, which are set by the API. Here are some of the most important ones you need to know:
An important thing to note is that embeds also have their limitations, which are set by the API. Here are some of the most important ones you need to know:
If you feel like experimenting even further you should take a look at the full list of limitations provided by Discord here.
It’s very important to keep in mind that when you are writing an embed, it should be in JSON format. Some bots even provide an embed visualizer within their dashboards. You can also use this embed visualizer tool which provides visualization for bot and webhook embeds.
Congratulations on launching your new and/or updated Patreon page! The beauty of this system is that you can continue to create new roles and channel permissions to best serve your community as you continue to grow. Now that you’re done with the basic steps outlined in this guide, all you have to do is edit/add/drop/shift roles around as needed to ensure you are making the most of your Discord Rewards patron program.
Patreon rewards give your fans and supporters exclusives in exchange for supporting your work. Having this automated system to handle and manage your supporters means you can spend more time making new content, and less time worrying about a bot, or a function in Discord whenever new patrons sign up. It also makes managing permissions much more simpler because you have a lot more control over which roles a patron is assigned to based on their subscription tier.
Even though this comparison is important for better understanding of both bots and webhooks, it does not mean you should limit yourself to only picking one or the other. Sometimes, bots and webhooks work their best when working together. It’s not uncommon for bots to use webhooks for logging purposes or to distinguish notable messages with a custom avatar and name for that message. Both tools are essential for a server to function properly and make for a powerful combination.
*Unconfigurable filters, these will catch all instances of the trigger, regardless of whether they’re spammed or a single instance
**Gaius also offers an additional NSFW filter as well as standard image spam filtering
***YAGPDB offers link verification via google, anything flagged as unsafe can be removed
****Giselle combines Fast Messages and Repeated Text into one filter
Anti-Spam is integral to running a large private server, or a public server. Spam, by definition, is irrelevant or unsolicited messages. This covers a wide base of things on Discord, there are multiple types of spam a user can engage in. The common forms are listed in the table above. The most common forms of spam are also very typical of raids, those being Fast Messages and Repeated Text. The nature of spam can vary greatly but the vast majority of instances involve a user or users sending lots of messages with the same contents with the intent of disrupting your server.
There are subsets of this spam that many anti-spam filters will be able to catch. If any of the following: Mentions, Links, Invites, Emoji, and Newline Text are spammed repeatedly in one message or spammed repeatedly across several messages, they will provoke most Repeated Text and Fast Messages filters appropriately. Subset filters are still a good thing for your anti-spam filter to contain as you may wish to punish more or less harshly depending on the spam. Namely, Emoji and Links may warrant separate punishments. Spamming 10 links in a single message is inherently worse than having 10 emoji in a message.
Anti-spam will only act on these things contextually, usually in an X in Y fashion where if a user sends, for example, 10 links in 5 seconds, they will be punished to some degree. This could be 10 links in one message, or 1 link in 10 messages. In this respect, some anti-spam filters can act simultaneously as Fast Messages and Repeated Text filters.
Sometimes, spam may happen too quickly for a bot to catch up. There are rate limits in place to stop bots from harming servers that can prevent deletion of individual messages if those messages are being sent too quickly. This can often happen in raids. As such, Fast Messages filters should prevent offenders from sending messages; this can be done via a mute, kick or ban. If you want to protect your server from raids, please read on to the Anti-Raid section of this article.
Text Filters
Text filters allow you to control the types of words and/or links that people are allowed to put in your server. Different bots will provide various ways to filter these things, keeping your chat nice and clean.
*Defaults to banning ALL links
**YAGPDB offers link verification via google, anything flagged as unsafe can be removed
***Setting a catch-all filter with carl will prevent link-specific spam detection
A text filter is integral to a well moderated server. It’s strongly, strongly recommended you use a bot that can filter text based on a blacklist. A Banned words filter can catch links and invites provided http:// and https:// are added to the word blacklist (for all links) or specific full site URLs to block individual websites. In addition, discord.gg can be added to a blacklist to block ALL Discord invites.
A Banned Words filter is integral to running a public server, especially if it’s a Partnered, Community or Verified server, as this level of auto moderation is highly recommended for the server to adhere to the additional guidelines attached to it. Before configuring a filter, it’s a good idea to work out what is and isn’t ok to say in your server, regardless of context. For example, racial slurs are generally unacceptable in almost all servers, regardless of context. Banned word filters often won’t account for context, with an explicit blacklist. For this reason, it’s also important a robust filter also contains whitelisting options. For example, if you add the slur ‘nig’ to your filter and someone mentions the country ‘Nigeria’ they could get in trouble for using an otherwise acceptable word.
Filter immunity may also be important to your server, as there may be individuals who need to discuss the use of banned words, namely members of a moderation team. There may also be channels that allow the usage of otherwise banned words. For example, a serious channel dedicated to discussion of real world issues may require discussions about slurs or other demeaning language, in this exception channel based Immunity is integral to allowing those conversations.
Link filtering is important to servers where sharing links in ‘general’ chats isn’t allowed, or where there are specific channels for sharing such things. This can allow a server to remove links with an appropriate reprimand without treating a transgression with the same severity as they would a user sending a racial slur.
Whitelisting/Blacklisting and templates for links are also a good idea to have. While many servers will use catch-all filters to make sure links stay in specific channels, some links will always be malicious. As such, being able to filter specific links is a good feature, with preset filters (Like the google filter provided by YAGPDB) coming in very handy for protecting your user base without intricate setup however, it is recommended you do configure a custom filter to ensure specific slurs, words etc. that break the rules of your server, aren’t being said.
Invite filtering is equally important in large or public servers where users will attempt to raid, scam or otherwise assault your server with links with the intention of manipulating your user base to join or where unsolicited self-promotion is potentially fruitful. Filtering allows these invites to be recognized, and dealt with more harshly. Some bots may also allow by-server white/blacklisting allowing you to control which servers are ok to share invites to, and which aren’t. A good example of invite filtering usage would be something like a partners channel, where invites to other, closely linked, servers are shared. These servers should be added to an invite whitelist to prevent their deletion.
Anti-Raid
Raids, as defined earlier in this article, are mass-joins of users (often selfbots) with the intent of damaging your server. There are a few methods available to you in order for you to protect your community from this behavior. One method involves gating your server with verification appropriately, as discussed in DMA 301.You can also supplement or supplant the need for verification by using a bot that can detect and/or prevent damage from raids.
*Unconfigurable, triggers raid prevention based on user joins & damage prevention based on humanly impossible user activity. Will not automatically trigger on the free version of the bot.
Raid detection means a bot can detect the large number of users joining that’s typical of a raid, usually in an X in Y format. This feature is usually chained with Raid Prevention or Damage Prevention to prevent the detected raid from being effective, wherein raiding users will typically spam channels with unsavoury messages.
Raid-user detection is a system designed to detect users who are likely to be participating in a raid independently of the quantity of frequency of new user joins. These systems typically look for users that were created recently or have no profile picture, among other triggers depending on how elaborate the system is.
Raid prevention stops a raid from happening, either by Raid detection or Raid-user detection. These countermeasures stop participants of a raid specifically from harming your server by preventing raiding users from accessing your server in the first place, such as through kicks, bans, or mutes of the users that triggered the detection.
Damage prevention stops raiding users from causing any disruption via spam to your server by closing off certain aspects of it either from all new users, or from everyone. These functions usually prevent messages from being sent or read in public channels that new users will have access to. This differs from Raid Prevention as it doesn’t specifically target or remove new users on the server.
Raid anti-spam is an anti spam system robust enough to prevent raiding users’ messages from disrupting channels via the typical spam found in a raid. For an anti-spam system to fit this dynamic, it should be able to prevent Fast Messages and Repeated Text. This is a subset of Damage Prevention.
Raid cleanup commands are typically mass-message removal commands to clean up channels affected by spam as part of a raid, often aliased to ‘Purge’ or ‘Prune’.It should be noted that Discord features built-in raid and user bot detection, which is rather effective at preventing raids as or before they happen. If you are logging member joins and leaves, you can infer that Discord has taken action against shady accounts if the time difference between the join and the leave times is extremely small (such as between 0-5 seconds). However, you shouldn’t rely solely on these systems if you run a large or public server.
User Filters
Messages aren’t the only way potential evildoers can present unsavoury content to your server. They can also manipulate their Discord username or Nickname to cause trouble. There are a few different ways a username can be abusive and different bots offer different filters to prevent this.
*Gaius can apply same blacklist/whitelist to names as messages or only filter based on items in the blacklist tagged %name
**YAGPDB can use configured word-list filters OR a regex filter
Username filtering is less important than other forms of auto moderation, when choosing which bot(s) to use for your auto moderation needs, this should typically be considered last, since users with unsavory usernames can just be nicknamed in order to hide their actual username.
One additional component not included in the table is the effects of implementing a verification gate. The ramifications of a verification gate are difficult to quantify and not easily summarized. Verification gates make it harder for people to join in the conversation of your server, but in exchange help protect your community from trolls, spam bots, those unable to read your server’s language, or other low intent users. This can make administration and moderation of your server much easier. You’ll also see that the percent of people that visit more than 3 channels increases as they explore the server and follow verification instructions, and that percent talked may increase if people need to type a verification command.
However, in exchange you can expect to see server leaves increase. In addition, total engagement on your other channels may grow at a slower pace. User retention will decrease as well. Furthermore, this will complicate the interpretation of your welcome screen metrics, as the welcome screen will need to be used to help people primarily follow the verification process as opposed to visiting many channels in your server. There is also no guarantee that people who send a message after clicking to read the verification instructions successfully verified. In order to measure the efficacy of your verification system, you may need to use a custom solution to measure the proportion of people that pass or fail verification.
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