10 Things to Check in Your Discord Server's Roles, Permissions and Layout

Few servers are set up wrong on purpose. Problems build up over time: a role is given extra permissions for one event and never trimmed, a channel is added to the wrong category, and a template brings along settings you never looked at.

This is a checklist of ten things worth looking at in your server, in roughly the order we'd check them. They're the same things Cordary's Server Checkup looks for. You can go through them by hand, or paste a template link into the free checkup and see which ones apply to you.

1. Only one role has Administrator

Administrator skips every permission check in Discord. Someone with it can see every channel, change every role and delete the server's channels. It also overrides channel permissions, so a private channel isn't private from them.

If more than one role has it, ask whether each one needs it. Moderators usually need a set of specific permissions, like timing people out and managing messages, rather than everything. In Server Settings, open Roles, choose the role and look at the top of its permissions. Our post on roles and permissions explains which ones to give instead.

2. @everyone can't manage anything

Everyone who joins gets the @everyone role. Whatever it can do, every member can do, including accounts that joined a minute ago.

Check that @everyone doesn't have permissions like Administrator, Manage Server, Manage Roles or Manage Channels. Then check the channels too. A single channel can give @everyone the Manage Permissions or Manage Channels permission through its own settings, and that's easy to miss because it doesn't show on the role.

3. You've decided who can mention everyone

Discord's default permissions let every member mention @everyone and @here. On a small private server that can be fine. On a bigger one, one careless or malicious message can ping the whole community.

Decide on purpose. If only staff should do it, turn off Mention @everyone, @here, and All Roles for @everyone and give it to the roles that need it.

4. Private categories stay private

A category set to private is only private if each channel in it agrees. A channel that has been moved in, or was made without syncing to its category, can stay open to everyone.

Look through your staff and admin categories and check that every channel in them is hidden from @everyone. A channel that's open when the rest of its category is hidden is nearly always an accident. Our post on private channels that aren't private shows how it happens.

5. Staff notices aren't public

If your server uses Community, Discord asks you to choose channels for its own notices, like community updates and safety alerts. Those are meant for your team. If @everyone can see them, anything Discord posts about your server is visible to everyone.

Check the channels you picked in Server Settings under Community, and make sure they're staff-only.

6. Onboarding has the right default channels

If you use Onboarding, the channels new members land in matter more than almost anything else. Discord expects a number of default channels, and members need enough of them where they can actually talk. A default channel that's hidden from @everyone is a dead end for a new person.

Check in Server Settings under Onboarding that your default channels exist, are visible to everyone and aren't hidden by a category. Our guide to Onboarding goes through it.

7. There's an AutoMod rule for spam

AutoMod can block spam and mention spam before a person has to deal with them. A server with no rule for either relies on someone being awake when it happens.

In Server Settings, open AutoMod and check that there's an enabled rule for spam and one for mass mentions. See how to set up AutoMod for the settings.

8. Roles nobody holds are gone

Old event roles, roles from a bot you've removed and test roles tend to hang around. They clutter the role list, make permissions harder to understand, and sometimes still carry permissions someone might get by mistake.

In Server Settings, open Roles and look at the member count beside each role. Anything at zero that you don't plan to use is a candidate for deleting.

9. No empty categories

Empty categories are harmless, and they make a server look unfinished. They usually appear after a reorganisation, when the channels moved and the heading stayed.

Delete them, or put something in them. If you're planning a bigger reorganisation, see how to reorganise a server without starting over.

10. Discord's starter channels are gone or used

A new Discord server comes with #general and a couple of default categories. When a server is later built out with its own channels, those starter ones often stay beside it. You end up with a second #general and nobody sure which one to use.

Keep the starter channels only if they're part of your layout. Otherwise remove them or rename and reuse them.

Find these automatically

Going through ten checks by hand is doable once. It's harder to keep doing. Cordary's Server Checkup runs these checks for you, shows what it found in plain words, and drafts each fix for you to review before anything changes. If you want to see what it looks like first, the free checkup works from a template link with no sign-in.

Open Cordary