Discord onboarding: a step-by-step setup guide for 2026

Discord onboarding is the built-in flow, found under Server Settings → Onboarding, that shows new members a few questions before they enter your server, gives them channels and roles based on their answers, and then opens a Server Guide with a welcome message, a short to-do list and your key resource pages. It needs Community enabled and at least 7 Default Channels, 5 of which @everyone can view and send messages in. This guide walks through each step in the order Discord asks for it, explains how onboarding fits with Rules Screening and role bots, gives three ready-made question sets, and shows how to check in Server Insights whether newcomers actually stay.

What onboarding replaces, and what it is made of

Discord made Community Onboarding available to every Community server on 30 March 2023. It replaces the older Welcome Screen: Discord's help centre says an existing Welcome Screen can no longer be edited, recommends Onboarding instead, and states that once Server Guide is enabled, new members do not see a Welcome Screen at all.

Onboarding has four parts. You configure the first three; the fourth is what members use afterwards.

Part	What the member sees	What you control
Default Channels	The channels already in their sidebar when they arrive	Which channels everyone gets
Customisation Questions	Multiple-choice questions, before or after joining	Answers that grant channels, roles or both
Server Guide	A welcome page with a message, to-dos and resource pages	Welcome Sign, New Member To-Dos, Resources
Channels & Roles tab	A tab above the channel list for changing answers later	Questions you choose not to ask before joining

The point is a short, personal channel list: a member who answered "ranked" and "EU" sees those channels, not 60 they will never open.

Before you start: requirements and permissions

Community must be on. Enable it under Server Settings → Enable Community → Get Started. Discord requires four things first:

1. A verification level that requires a verified email before members can message or DM anyone in the server.
2. The explicit media content filter set to scan media from all members.
3. A rules or guidelines channel.
4. A Community Updates channel, where Discord sends notices for admins and moderators.

You need the right permissions. Setting up onboarding requires Manage Server and Manage Roles, or Administrator. A bot editing onboarding through Discord's API needs the same pair.

Use the desktop app or browser. Members can go through onboarding on any device, but admins can only configure and enable it on desktop.

Turn on raid alerts first. Discord pitches onboarding as a replacement for bot-run verification gates and pairs it with Raid Protection at Server Settings → Safety Setup → Raid Protection. If the system detects a likely join raid, it can alert you and require a CAPTCHA from new joiners for the next hour. Our AutoMod and permissions baseline covers the rest of that setup.

Step 1: choose your Default Channels

Default Channels are the channels every new member has in their sidebar from the first second. Discord will not let you enable onboarding until:

• at least 7 Default Channels are selected, and
• at least 5 of those allow @everyone to View Channel and Send Messages.

Discord's developer documentation describes two modes for that rule: the default counts only Default Channels, and an advanced mode also counts channels your Questions assign. Either way, do not pad the defaults just to hit the number.

Pick active channels that work for someone who knows nothing yet: general chat, introductions, announcements, events, a help forum, and LFG or "share your work" if that is the core activity. Leave niche channels to Questions.

Read-only channels count towards the 7 but not towards the 5. A server whose defaults are rules, announcements and three chat channels is two talkable channels short, which is usually the first error people hit.

Step 2: write the Customisation Questions

Each question has answers, and each answer can add channels, roles, or both. When a member picks an answer, they get those roles and the channels appear in their list. Every question has three switches:

Setting	What it does	Use it for
Ask before a member joins	Shows the question in the pre-join flow	Questions that assign channels or important roles
Allow multiple answers	Lets members tick several answers	"Choose all that apply" interests
Make required	Members must answer to continue	Questions that assign channels most people need

A question with "Ask before a member joins" switched off does not appear in the joining flow. It sits under Channels & Roles → Customize, where existing members can answer it too. That is the right place for pronoun roles, colour roles and notification pings.

How long, how many. Discord's help centre does not publish a hard cap on questions or answers. Its examples article gives the limits worth designing around:

• 6 answers is a good maximum for a question that assigns channels.
• Put off-topic channels in a separate question rather than lengthening the main one.
• One answer can grant several channels and roles at once, so consolidate instead of adding answers.
• If a question has many answers, drop the descriptions.
• If one long question could be two short ones, split it.
• Do not put rules inside onboarding questions. Members are asked to accept rules after they join.

Two or three pre-join questions is enough for most servers; every extra required screen is another chance to close the tab.

Never attach a staff role to an answer. Anyone who joins can pick any answer, so any role an answer grants is effectively public. Keep onboarding roles to channel access, pings and cosmetics, with no moderation permissions.

Use Preview at the top of the page after every change. It is the fastest way to catch an answer pointing at the wrong channel.

Step 3: make most channels reachable

Discord's guidance is that most member channels should be in either Default Channels or a Question, and the settings page lists the channels you have not assigned. Unassigned channels still exist, but new members only find them through Channels & Roles → Browse Channels, which many never open. If the list is long, add an answer or a post-join question rather than leaving channels stranded.

Step 4: build the Server Guide

Server Guide unlocks once Default Channels and Questions are done. It is available to all Community servers and, once enabled, is visible to every member, not only new ones. It has three parts.

Welcome Sign. A short message from you at the top of the guide: what the server is for, what to do first, who to ask.

New Member To-Dos. Discord asks for 3 to 5 tasks that get people talking. Good to-dos point to an action in a specific channel: introduce yourself, post your setup, ask your first question in the help forum. "Read the rules" is a weak to-do, because Rules Screening already handles it. Discord's API exposes member flags for starting and completing these to-dos, so a bot can tell who finished them.

Resources. Pick read-only channels to turn into resource pages. They leave the channel list, open at the top rather than the bottom of the message history, and lose the message bar and avatars, while content, embeds, media and formatting stay as they are. FAQs, role explanations, event calendars and a long-form rules page are good candidates. For the rules page itself, start from our rules template post rather than a blank channel.

Step 5: preview and enable

Run through Preview once more, then enable. Two behaviours to know:

• Members who leave and rejoin go through onboarding again.
• Members can change their answers at any time from the Channels & Roles tab, which adds or removes the linked channels and roles.

How onboarding works with Rules Screening

Onboarding and Rules Screening are separate features that run one after the other. Rules Screening lives at Server Settings → Safety Setup → DM and Spam Protection → Members must accept rules before they can talk or DM, holds up to 16 rules, and stops pending members from talking, reacting or DMing other members until they accept. Discord's Server Guide FAQ confirms that Rules Screening "still appears as normal" with Server Guide on.

For the newcomer, the order is:

1. The invite opens and the pre-join questions appear.
2. They join with the channels and roles from their answers.
3. A bar asks them to accept the rules before they can talk.
4. The Server Guide is waiting with to-dos and resources.

Two details matter. Manually verifying someone in Server Settings → Members bypasses the rules requirement. And Discord warns that the rules step "can sometimes lead to a drop off in joiners", which is one more reason not to repeat the rules as an onboarding question as well.

Bots that assign roles: what to keep and what to retire

Before onboarding, most servers used a reaction-role bot for self-roles and a "click to verify" gate. Discord now recommends removing bot-powered verification steps that confuse or lock out new members. Its Rules Screening FAQ notes that bot gates do not stop DMs to server members, and that if you keep an old gate while switching to Rules Screening you must re-enable permissions on @everyone.

Retire: reaction roles that only hand out channel access or interest pings. Onboarding questions do that natively, before the member arrives.

Keep: roles onboarding cannot express, such as levelling rewards, timed roles, game-account linking and ticket systems. Carl-bot (listing) still makes sense for reaction-role panels inside channels, and Welcomer (listing) for custom welcome cards, as long as neither duplicates your onboarding questions.

Watch autoroles. Two documented behaviours make "give a role on join" risky:

• Community's verified-email requirement does not apply to members who have been assigned a role. An autorole that fires on join quietly removes that check.
• Until a member passes screening, Discord's API marks them pending. A well-built bot waits until pending becomes false; YAGPDB, for example, has an option to assign its autorole only after the member completes screening. Check that your bot has an equivalent before combining it with Rules Screening.

Discord's member flags also include "started onboarding" and "completed onboarding", which bots can read when a member updates. Our post on which bots a new server needs covers the rest of a minimal setup.

Three example question sets

Each set assumes 7 or more Default Channels are already chosen. "Pre-join" means "Ask before a member joins" is on.

Gaming server

Question	Settings	Answers → what they grant
Which games do you play here?	Pre-join, multiple, required	Valorant, League of Legends, Minecraft → that game's channels + role; Something else → general gaming channel
How do you like to play?	Pre-join, multiple	Ranked → ranked LFG + ping role; Casual → casual LFG; Tournaments → tournament channels + ping role; Just here to chat → off-topic channels
Region	Pre-join, single	EU, NA, LATAM, Asia-Pacific → region role + voice channels
Notifications	Post-join, multiple	Patch notes, Events, Giveaways → ping roles

The region question pays off in LFG: players filter by role instead of asking "EU?" in every post. Browse the gaming tag to see how active gaming servers lay out their channels.

Art server

Question	Settings	Answers → what they grant
What do you make?	Pre-join, multiple, required	Digital, Traditional, 3D and animation, Pixel art → matching showcase channels
What are you here for?	Pre-join, multiple	Feedback → critique forum; Commissions → commission channels; Art challenges → challenge channel + ping role; Hanging out → off-topic channels
Experience	Post-join, single	Beginner, Hobbyist, Professional → cosmetic role
Notifications	Post-join, multiple	Challenge prompts, Live streams → ping roles

Making commissions an opt-in answer keeps commission posts out of everyone else's sidebar. The art tag shows how established art servers split their channels.

Study server

Question	Settings	Answers → what they grant
What are you studying?	Pre-join, multiple, required	Secondary school, University STEM, University humanities, Languages, Professional certificates, Self-study → subject channels + role
How do you want to study?	Pre-join, multiple	Silent focus rooms, Pomodoro with timers, Accountability check-ins → matching voice and text channels
Time zone	Pre-join, single	UTC−8 to −4, UTC−3 to +1, UTC+2 to +5, UTC+6 to +10 → time-zone role
Reminders	Post-join, multiple	Daily check-in, Exam season events → ping roles

The first question sits at exactly six answers, the maximum Discord's examples recommend, and time-zone roles make accountability partners practical. The study tag lists study servers whose invites we check live.

Measuring whether onboarding keeps newcomers

Server Insights is the built-in tool. Discord's FAQ says it is available to Community servers with more than 500 members and is gated by the View Server Insights permission; open it from the server name dropdown or from Server Settings. Data is current to the previous day, goes back 120 days for most servers, and every chart exports to CSV.

The section that matters is Growth & Activation: where new members came from, whether they managed to talk, and how many returned. Discord's moderator guidance defines first-week retention as the share of new members who visit again between 7 and 14 days after joining, and suggests revisiting onboarding when it falls. Two more definitions help: a visitor is a member who clicked into any channel, and a communicator is a member who talked in a text or voice channel.

A simple way to test a change:

1. Export Growth & Activation to CSV for the four weeks before the change.
2. Change one thing, such as cutting a required question or swapping a Default Channel, and note the date.
3. Wait at least two full weeks so the first cohort completes its 7-to-14-day window, then export the same length of time after the change.
4. Compare first-day activation and first-week retention between the two periods.

Discord says no absolute growth figure marks a healthy community, so compare the server against itself.

Under 500 members? Use rough signals instead:

• Role member counts under Server Settings → Roles show how many people picked each answer. An answer nobody picks is a candidate for removal.
• Activity in the introductions channel and your to-do channels shows whether the Server Guide drives first messages.
• A statistics bot such as Statbot (listing) can chart joins, leaves and messages over time.

Retention also depends on how people arrive. A visitor who hits a dead invite never reaches onboarding at all, which is why Discordfinder checks every listed invite every 15 minutes; how we check invites explains the method.

Try it: once onboarding is live, list your server on Discordfinder for free so visitors arrive through an invite we keep checking, and browse the community tag or the moderation tag to see how other owners handle the first five minutes.