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2 - Bot Setup and Features

Use-Cases and Limits​

Laci comes with a bot that can take care of most tasks for you. The bot has the following features:

  • Administration: User creation and global messaging
  • User self-registration and self-management
  • Server Clean Up: Can remove users from the discord server that have not self registered
  • Logging

By default, all of these features are turned off. You do not need to worry that the bot will remove any users! We will go into configuration later in this article.

Right now, the bot has the following limitations:

  • The bot can only be added to a single server

Bot Creation​

  1. Go to the Discord developer portal: https://discord.com/developers/applications
  2. Hit New Application, set a name for your bot and create.
  3. Navigate to your bot -> Installation
  4. Under Installation Context, untick User Install
  5. (Optional, Recommended) Disable public adding of this bot by setting the Install Link from Discord Provided Link to None
  6. Navigate to Bot
  7. (Optional, Recommended) Disable public adding by unticking Public Bot
  8. Enable server members intent by clicking the Server Members Intent checkbox toggle
  9. Hit Reset Token. You will receive a new bot token. This is a secret and should not be shared. Make sure this is stored somewhere safe! You need it later!
  10. Save

Now you need a server to add the bot to. If this is the first time you are playing with bots, it's recommended you do this on a private server for now, and later move the bot to a new server.

Preparing the server​

You want the following channels in your server:

  • A channel for self-service, for example #laci-self-service. This channel will be used for the bot self service, like registration
  • A channel for logging for your admins, for example #laci-logs

For both channels, right-click the channel name and copy the ID. Note the IDs down somewhere, we will need them.

Adding the bot​

Open the following URL in your browser while changing the <your-bot-id> to your bot's Application ID. You can find the ID in the developer portal under General Information

https://discord.com/api/oauth2/authorize?client_id=<your-bot-id>&permissions=0&scope=bot%20applications.commands

This will add the bot to your server without any special permissions, meaning the bot can not manage users or add/remove roles from members!

Configuring Laci-Services via compose-template​

Now everything is set up and you just need to configure the laci-services module to know your bot. If you use the default composefile, you will have to do the following

  • Set the LACI_DISCORD_TOKEN in .env to your bot token
  • Set the LaciSynchroni.DiscordChannelForMessages in services.appsettings.json to the ID of your self-service channel.
  • Set the LaciSynchroni.DiscordChannelForBotLog in services.appsettings.json to the ID of your logging channel

If your instance is running already, you will have to reboot it now. Otherwise, continue with the setup guide!