Lockdown

You may need to lock your server or channel for multiple reasons. You’re getting raided and need to clean up, the server is getting spammy, and out of control and mods are not available, you’re revamping the server or simply you and your staff team need a break. Whatever the case may be, the following set up will help guide you. It is also in my opinion the best and safest way to setup permissions and applies to all servers with slight modification

The Setup

I worked quite long on this infographic and I’m not a good designer but I think it turned out quite well to concisely display the perms setup whilst also being detailed enough. Best part about this set up is that there are minimal channel overrides, almost everything is left as default / neutral. You don’t even need to use bots if you wish!

The way this permission set up works is that for every regular / vanity role a server member can get, it has no permissions to send messages. What I mean is that the only role that has send messages is the @everyone role. The Send Messages permissions is inherited from the @everyone role, that way you do not need any overrides. You may have moderator roles that you’d want to be able to type during a lockdown, in that case you grant them send messages in role settings and in channel overrides.

How to lockdown server?

Toggle OFF the send messages and send messages in threads permissions for the @everyone role in server settings. Anyone with manage server permissions can do this.

How to lockdown a specific channel?

Toggle OFF send messages and send messages in threads. To unlock return the perm back to neutral / .

Technically you don’t even needs bots to use this simple lockdown system. Users with manage server and manage channels permissions can handle it. Good for people who don’t like having too many bots on their server.

Bots to use for lockdown

Carl-bot (recommended)

Carl bot’s !lock server command does exactly what is described above, toggles off the 2 send message permissions. You can set up roles to use the command without having manage server permissions. Same with the !lock #channel command.

Custom command bot (recommended)

Create a quick 2 line script which follows the permission change. It’s even more customisable than Carl and isn’t too difficult to setup. Gives additional options to view lock channels too.

Other bots

Other bots don’t exactly follow this set up making locking down more complicated and a bit tricky. As long as your permissions are set up as described above, you can utilise the one-click lockdown set up in addition to using these bots.

1. Dyno - Pre-select channels for server !lockdown from the dashboard to server lock. For single channel use !lock.

2. Sapphire - Pre-select channels for server !lockall from the dashboard to server lock. For single channel use !lock . Additional option to viewlock and deny send messages in thread perms when issuing command.

3. Wick - Useful if you’re already using Wick, otherwise is NOT recommended for regular servers.

FAQ

1) My server has a @member role and uses bot verification to gain access to the server. How do I set it up ?

A very slight deviation from the Infographic. Toggle OFF “View Channel” for @everyone and Toggle ON “View Channel” for @member. Keep all else permissions toggled OFF for @member, View Channel should be the only permission the role has (unless you know what you’re doing). Then you need to adjust permissions for your #verification channel. Deny Send Messages for @everyone , grant View Channel for @everyone and deny View Channel for @member. This way users can’t speak in the channel, it’ll be the only channel that shows when users join the server and gets hidden once users pass your bot verification. All other general chatting channels have default / neutral same as the image above. This set up also keeps channel icons clean since it doesn’t make the channels “private” and have a lock icon.

2) My server uses onboarding and I need to meet the channel criteria, can I still use this ?

Yes, you can. Since all public channels have view channels and send messages as default, and the @everyone role has view channel and send messages permission, the @everyone role already has permissions for all channels. If you need to initiate a lockdown it’s the same steps as mentioned in the image. Just make sure no member obtainable role has a Send Messages granted in channel overrides.

3) How to lock forum channels in server lockdown ? There’s no “create posts” permission in server settings.

The “create posts” permission in forum channels is tied to “send messages”. It’s only mentioned in the developer docs, but when you toggle off send messages, no one will be able to create a post. If you have additional roles or permission you would need to be mindful of that.

4) A role lower in the hierarchy grants send messages, and a higher in the hierarchy denies send messages, why can the user still speak?

Hierarchy does not matter in role overrides. When you explicitly grant a role a perm, it overrides the deny perm. It works slightly differently when applied to the @everyone role, but thats a discussion for another time.

The future of server locking natively

Discord is currently working on lockdowns which may result in this becoming redundant. However for those you want more granular control this will definitely be more helpful. Here’s some images that was shared on this discord admin server about native server lockdown and anti-raid.

That’s all for this lockdown post. If you need help in setting up lockdown in your server or are building a bot for it, I would be more than happy to help. Next week onwards I’ll be changing the newsletter to be published on Tuesday or Wednesday at 12 PM GMT. The lockdown post will be available on the Discord resources notion page next week as well at https://go.daksh.gg/lockdown.

Next week will be discussing notification bots for social alerts on your discord server.

For any feedback feel free to join the Discord, fill in the contact or simply reply back to this email.

You’ve made it to the end :)
- Daksh