Forum Channels on Discord are Finally Out for Everyone
Ladies and gentleman, it is now official: Forum channels are out for everyone. From all the recent updates on Discord, this might just be the biggest and the best one. Here is exactly how to, when, and why you should make a Forum Channel for your community.
Discord Forum Channels
Forum channels are a revolutionary way for Discord communities to organize their conversation. Consider it your very own social-media channel, or even better, a SubReddit within your Discord server. Except you're the one who makes the rules on how it should be used, and you can make multiple.
Discord has been testing this feature for months on end with its communities. Forums are the 5th type of channel to be added to general community servers.
Discord describes forum channels as:
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.
Participating in Forums
Forums are not your typical free range chatting channels. Forums offer a whole new 'posting' system that let you make posts which can be reacted to, commented on by the community, and even pinned to the top of the channel.
There are advanced features like default reactions to make add a reaction with a custom emoji as soon as a post is made. And the best feature within Forums are tags. Tags are customizable filters or bookmarks that let you organize your posts better. People can hop into a desired conversation from a tag that interests them.
For example, I have a forum in my Discord server where people can ask for help with their Discord servers or Discord in general. I have 5 tags relevant the type of help they want so they can get answers faster from a community member.
As a Server Admin
It starts with creating a forum channel. And the first steps are as easy as creating any other channel. Discord guides you with forums on your first time. Two most important thing in any forum is having proper guidelines and proper tags.
The Post Guidelines box appears right next to your actual forum posts on the right side of the main content area. Editing this is as simple as editing any channel topic. However, the guidelines features an exclusive markdown editor that we can't find anywhere. Instead of typing \*** to bolden your texts, you can simply use the bar on top with all the mark down features. This is really handy and should be available in other places too.
Moderating the forums is not a super difficult task. Infact, forums are powered by Discord AutoMod. Only thing you need to actively look out for are low effort/troll posts. However with the new built in filters in AutoMod, many spam and mention spam posts will be automatically blocked.
As a user
The user experience on a forum will be smooth and easy. Go to any relevant forum in any server, type out your content or add your media, choose a tag and hit post. Users will be able to comment on your post and you will be able to comment on others'. Even custom reactions are possible.
Read Discord's official blog here:
So what do you think about forums. Are they your cup of tea or would you much rather stick to channels with 6 hour slow mode and auto threads? Also, a rare bug has seemed to be floating around. People are having trouble creating a tag in the forum on the first try. Hopefully Discord developers will identify the issue and fix this.
In our personal opinion forums are absolutely revolutionary and will change the platform for communities forever. That's all for today, hope you enjoyed today's article. Make sure to join our official Discord server to discuss further on this topic or suggest new articles!