Set Up a Discord Welcome Message: Greeting, Rules and Onboarding

The first few minutes decide whether a new member stays. Someone who joins a Discord server and only sees a long channel list with no guidance is often gone just as quickly. A good Discord welcome message greets people personally, points them to the rules and tells them where to start.

In this guide you build the complete entry path: the greeting in a channel, an optional direct message, rules confirmed with a button, and how all of it fits together with the onboarding that Discord itself provides. By the end, every new member follows a clear route from joining to their first message.

What Discord can do on its own

Discord has a simple built-in greeting. In Server Settings under Overview you pick a channel for system messages and can have Discord send a random welcome message when someone joins. Members can reply to it with a sticker. Discord writes those texts, so you cannot add your own content, links or a pointer to the rules.

Community servers also get Onboarding. It asks new members questions when they join, for example about interests or language, and gives them matching roles and channels. On top of that there are default channels everyone sees and a server guide with first tasks. To enable Community, Discord requires a rules channel, among other things. How to build a server from scratch is covered in the guide on creating a Discord server.

Discord onboarding and Lizbot complement each other: Discord sorts members by interest, Lizbot takes care of the personal greeting, confirmed rules and protection against bots.

1. Set up the welcome message in a channel

In the Lizbot dashboard, open your server and go to Welcome. In the Welcome tab, set the Welcome message to Enabled, pick a Channel and write the Text. Greetings are fully included in the Free plan.

A good example:

Welcome {user.mention} to **{guild.name}**! You are member #{guild.memberCount}. Take a quick look at the rules in <#channel-id> and then feel free to introduce yourself.

Short is better: one line of greeting, one hint about the next step. Nobody reads long texts in a fast-moving welcome channel.

2. Use placeholders correctly

Placeholders go in curly braces. Lizbot replaces them with real values when sending. These are available in the welcome, goodbye and DM messages:

For the goodbye message, use {user.tag} or {user.name} rather than a mention, since someone who left won't be notified anyway. Link a channel with <#channel-id>. You copy the ID in Discord by right-clicking the channel once Developer Mode is enabled in Discord's settings under Advanced.

3. Design an embed with an image

Attach embed turns the greeting into a designed card. You set Title, Color, Description and Footer, all with placeholders. For the Thumbnail in the top right you choose between None, User avatar, Server icon and Custom image.

Under Image URL you add a large image, such as a banner with your server logo. Lizbot does not generate an image here; it shows whatever image lives at that address. So upload the banner somewhere permanent and public. The member's avatar as the thumbnail still makes every greeting feel personal.

Preview by DM sends you the message in advance so you can check the layout and placeholders. Save first.

4. Goodbye, DM and more channels

The other tabs round out the greeting:

• Goodbye: a short message when someone leaves. Personal on small servers, often too much noise on large ones.
• Direct message: a private message to new members. Good for links and info that would get lost in a channel. Some members have DMs from server members turned off, in which case the message doesn't arrive.
• More channels: the same greeting in up to four additional channels, each with its own text. Ideal for bilingual servers with separate English and German welcome channels.
• Delete message after: on large servers Lizbot removes the greeting after a set time, up to 3,600 seconds. 0 means never.

In the On role grant tab, Lizbot greets members as soon as they receive a specific role, such as a language role from a role menu. Each rule only fires once per member. Here you also get {role.name}, {role.mention} and {channel.mention}. You can create up to 10 of these rules.

5. Let members accept the rules with a button

A rules channel on its own often gets scrolled past. With the Rules acceptance module, members actively confirm the rules and receive a role in return. Here is how:

• Choose the Rules channel, ideally one everyone can see but only the bot writes in.
• Choose the Role after accepting, usually the member role that unlocks the other channels.
• Load a ready-made rule set under Template or write your own Rules with up to 4,000 characters.
• Save and click Publish.

Lizbot posts the rules with an Accept rules button. The dashboard shows the current Version and how many members have accepted it. If Ask to confirm again after changes is on, Lizbot removes the role from everyone when the text changes, and each member confirms the new version.

For this to work, the other channels must be hidden from @everyone and visible only to the member role.

6. Align verification and autoroles

The Verification tab adds protection against bots: via Button in Discord (one click), Web page with captcha or Code by email, optionally with a Minimum account age. Details are in the guide on Discord verification.

Under Autoroles, new members get roles automatically, separately for humans and bots. With Only assign after Discord membership screening turned on, Lizbot waits until the member has accepted the rules in Discord's own membership screening. Careful: if an autorole grants access to every channel right on join, it bypasses your verification. Lizbot shows a warning in that case.

A proven flow

This is how the pieces fit together on a typical community server:

1. The member joins and answers Discord's onboarding questions.
2. Lizbot posts the greeting with their avatar in the welcome channel.
3. In the rules channel, the member clicks Accept rules and gets the member role.
4. The role opens up the channels, and a role-grant greeting invites them to the introductions channel.

Checklist

• the welcome message is enabled and points to the rules channel
• placeholders checked with Preview by DM
• rules are published and the role after accepting is set
• @everyone only sees welcome, rules and announcements
• the Lizbot role is above the member role
• autoroles don't grant access around verification

Common mistakes

Misspelled placeholders: Lizbot does not replace unknown placeholders like {server} or {member}, so they show up literally in the message. Use exactly the spelling from the table, for example {user.mention} instead of {user}.

Role above the Lizbot role: If the member role sits higher in the role list than Lizbot, the bot cannot assign it. The accept button then does nothing.

Too much at once: A channel greeting, a DM, a goodbye and mentions in three channels quickly feel like spam. Start with the greeting and the rules, add the rest when needed.

Image link expires: Links to images that are only hosted temporarily stop working after a while. Use a permanent address.