When your community’s really going off on something, it can be hard to slip a word in edgewise. How do you barge into #food proclaiming ranch as the best pizza dip when everyone else is five thousand posts into a debate over normal vs. tiny tomatoes? What do you do—wait for the heat to die down? Summon all your pizza fanatics and stage a daring takeover? Or just let this critical discussion go unstaged?
Soon you won’t have to choose. We’re excited to begin rolling out an option that can help your community server hold organized, meaningful conversations without drowning each other out: Forum Channels.
Forum Channels create dedicated spaces for each new topic of discussion. You’ll be able to see everything people are chatting about before you jump in, allowing you to engage in an existing discussion —or start a new one — without worrying about breaking up or getting in the way of other ongoing conversations.
How Can I Participate in Forum Channels?
Forums are a place designed for focused discussions, not just free-range chatting. When you explore a Forum Channel, you’ll see a list of posts that start new conversations, complete with big bolded titles and relevant tags. You can hop into one of them and join in, use the search bar to find more posts in the archives, or even create your own—complete with a helpful, descriptive image that will display for anyone scrolling by.
While you’re crafting a new post, be sure to check that channel’s Post Guidelines. Along with the provided tags, they’ll give you a sense of what subjects the Moderators and Admins want you to discuss.
Community server owners can add as many Forum Channels as they need, just like good ol’ Text and Voice. Seeing a lot of fitness-themed back-and-forth in #general? Might be a good idea to add a Fitness Forum to give those long back-and-forths about macros and gains a new home. Or, if the conversations tend to be more casual, maybe a classic Text Channel is best. It’s all about putting more tools in a server owner’s toolbox.
For a more detailed guide to running and using Forum Channels, take a peek at our Help Center article.
What’s Moderating a Forum Channel Like?
When you press the “Create Channel” button, you’ll see a new option: Forum Channel. Select it, name your new creation, and—if you want—restrict it to specific members or roles by making it Private.
Once you’re underway, there are a few settings you’ll want to take care of:
- Set recommended permissions: Who can post? @Everyone? Or only certain roles?
- Create Post Guidelines: What do you want people to talk about here?
- Set a default reaction for posts: Choose an emoji to be offered as a reaction on all new Forum topics. Community members with the right permissions can replace it with something else.
- Create Tags: Get the party started by coming up with some simple words (or short phrases) that will help people categorize their posts inside the Forum Channel, making it easier to search for interesting conversations. If you want, you can let @everyone create their own tags as well.
- Make the first post: Once everything’s set up, show ‘em how it’s done! Forums take getting used to, so set a good example.
AutoMod is compatible with Forum channel conversations, as are most bots or apps that moderate Threads. Making your own bot? We’ve updated our API Documentation with info that can help.
Form Meaningful Conversations with Forums: Out Now!
Like Threads and Text in Voice before, Forum Channels let focused conversations thrive without hogging a channel. No more watching an interesting discussion get drowned out, hijacked, or abandoned because it went stale for a few hours. More than ever, every conversation has a place on Discord now.
Forum channels are slowly making their way to Community servers starting today — keep an eye out on your own server to see when you’ll be able to create Forum channels! Don’t have Community enabled? Check out what features enabling Community brings to you and your server here.
If you want to show off the wild conversations your Forum Channels are nurturing, shoot us a screenshot, tweet, or video by finding us on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram.
Got feedback instead? Let us know at the Discord Feedback Forums (which are NOT a Forum Channel; they’re old school). Or, if that’s not hands-on enough for you, you could always work with us. No pressure.
