How to make a Discord bot, with or without code

Bots are part of what make Discord fun, but where do they come from? For the most part, bots are built by other Discord users. You can find a bunch of ready-to-install bots over at DiscordBots.org, or you can build your own. Here's how to make a Discord bot.

How to Make a Discord Bot with Code

Interested in building a bot from scratch? You can, if you know how to write JavaScript. Thomas Lombart wrote a great Medium piece outlining the process, and I recommend you start there. To summarize, you need to:

Install the relevant dependencies on your computer
Write the code for your bot
Set up a Discord developer account
Give the bot the proper permissions
Troubleshoot your bot
Upload the bot to a server
Lombart's tutorial outlines the whole process and shows you how to build a bot that can kick people out of the current room. You can check Discord's documentation to learn all of the other things you can do. But the best way to learn is to dig in and start coding.

How to Make a Discord Bot Without Code

If you're not a coder, we can help. Zapier can connect Discord with thousands of apps, allowing you to build bots that pull information from the rest of the web. You can get started right here if you know what you want to build.

Let's start with a simple example. Imagine that you run a local Discord chat room and want to send a message to the group when it's going to rain. Start building a Zap, then choose Weather by Zapier as the trigger app.

Next, select Will It Rain Today? as the trigger, then click Save and Continue.

You'll be asked for your longitude and latitude and whether you'd like to use Celsius or Fahrenheit.

Click Continue, and move onto the second step. This is where you will use Discord.

Select Send Channel Message, then click Save + Continue.

You will be asked to connect your Discord account to Zapier, and you'll select which server you want to add your bot to.

Once that's done, you can set up your template. Choose which channel the post should go to, then customize your message.

You can pull in information from the trigger step by clicking the fields button, which opens a pull down menu.

Click anything in this menu to add that information to your message. Almost done! You can optionally enable text to speech, change the bot's name, and give the bot a custom icon, before clicking Continue.

Now you're ready to test your bot.

Click Send Test to Discord, and you should see a success message.

Discord bot working
Congrats! You've set up a simple bot below by just doing this!

This is just one example, of course. You can build bots connecting any of the thousands of apps offered by Zapier. This is an easy way to send messages every time a new Twitch stream starts, for example.

Or, using the magic of RSS, you could announce new articles on any website, or even new podcast episodes.