Getting Started

Add the Bot

Use the add button on this site. Discord asks which server and which permissions. Anyone who can add a bot to that server can do it — in Discord that is the Manage Server permission.

Grant every permission it asks for. A missing one never crashes anything, but the feature that needs it will tell you it cannot do its job.

What it Does the Moment it Joins

• It knows which server it is in. Nothing to type.
• It sets the clock to UTC. If you are somewhere else, change it under /menu › Other › Admin › Settings › Setup › All settings. Daily, the weekly and season resets, event times, the goal countdown and birthdays follow it; Stats days still follow the bot's own clock.
• It creates a Server Manager role, shows it in the member list, and puts itself in it. The role carries full Discord Administrator — anyone you add to it becomes a server admin and can open the admin console.

/menu works for every member straight away, and a member opening it for the first time sees a short welcome card first.

Complete Setup

The first time an admin opens /menu, Asbern shows Complete setup first: six quick steps, one at a time — Staff and Logs, Welcome and Joining, Levels and Visibility, Access and AFK, Support Tickets and Protection. Each step is already filled in with Asbern's best guess, so most of the time you press Looks good; Change opens just that one thing.

• Skip for now hides it until your next /menu. Don't show me again hides it for you only — other admins still see it until the server's setup is complete.
• It never changes something you already set. Anything you answered before, including a setting you switched off, is shown as it is and left alone.
• Every answer is the same setting the admin console holds, so you can change it later either way. To walk it again: /menu › Other › Admin › Settings › Setup › Complete setup.
• Protection switches on the recommended safety pack: scam links (our list) and Discord AutoMod's spam and mention-flood rules, made in Discord's own AutoMod — the spam rules tell your staff and leave the message up — plus Asbern's raid lockdown (with Undo), the warn, time out and kick ladder, appeals, and Discord's new-member verification. AutoMod rules you made yourself are left exactly as they are, and a rule you already have for one of these counts as done.

Check Where the Bot's Role Sits

Discord only lets a bot hand out roles that sit below its own, and it puts a new bot's role at the bottom of the list. If the bot is too low to manage the roles it needs, the General tab says so in place of its usual canvas, and the admin console waits until it is fixed. Members can use the rest of /menu as normal while the notice is up.

• The minimum: the notice names the lowest place that works. Drag the bot's role there.
• Better: as high as you can put it. Every role the bot adds later lands under it, so a bot parked exactly at the minimum comes back to this notice.
• If a Server Manager role from before already sits high enough, the notice may ask you to add the bot to it instead. That is one step and nothing to drag.

Then press Check again. It also finishes whatever the bot could not do the first time.

Open the Admin Console

Run /menu and press /menu › Other › Admin. Everything the bot can be set to do is in there. There are no config files and nothing that needs a developer. See The Admin Console.

Only admins see Admin. If it is not there, you are not a Discord Administrator, the server owner, or in a role the console trusts. Ask someone who is.

The One Setting Worth Doing First

Set a moderator channel — Complete setup's first step does it, or /menu › Other › Admin › Settings › Setup › All settings. It is optional, but until it is set, moderation notices have nowhere private to go. Everything else starts with a sensible default.

What Is Free

Everything. Asbern is free: every feature is included in every server, and no card is needed.

Link Your Homelab, If You Want To

Watch parties and game servers are extras that run on a machine one of your admins owns. We host neither. If you want them, read Link Your Homelab. Nothing else in Asbern needs any hardware.