How to Set Up Your Server’s Roles for Members, Mods & Admins (opens in new tab)

Discord recommends organizing server permissions into three tiers: members, moderators, and administrators. Members receive essential communication and activity permissions, moderators get tools to manage conversations and users, and admins receive powerful server-management capabilities. Permissions should be tailored to each community and granted selectively, especially at the administrative level.

Permissions for Server Members

Members need permissions that support ordinary participation:

• General: View channels, send messages, create public threads, send messages in threads, create invites, and change their own nickname.
• Voice: Connect, speak, use video for webcams or screen sharing, use external sounds, use voice activity, and set voice-channel statuses.
• Apps: Use application commands, Activities, and external apps.

These permissions enable text chat, voice communication, streaming, games, and app-based interactions.

Permissions for Moderators

Moderators receive tools for keeping discussions and community activity orderly.

• Message and thread management: Manage messages and threads, including deleting content, pinning messages, and archiving or renaming threads.
• Community management: Create custom expressions, use broad mentions such as @everyone, kick or approve/reject members, ban members, apply timeouts, and manage other users’ nicknames.
• Oversight: View the audit log to review actions taken on the server.
• Voice moderation: Use Priority Speaker, mute or deafen members, and move participants between voice channels.
• Events: Create, edit, manage, and delete community events.

Most moderator actions can be reversed, though bans and large-scale mentions require particular care.

Advanced Permissions for Server Administrators

Administrative permissions affect major parts of the server, including messages, emojis, channels, and server settings.

• Admin permissions should be enabled only when they are relevant to the community.
• They should be assigned to a very limited group of trusted users.
• Manage Server allows administrators to change core server settings, including the server name.

The post’s main recommendation is to use the least amount of access necessary for each role, scaling permissions as the server grows and carefully restricting the most powerful controls.