How it works
New members first end up in a state in which they see almost nothing: only the rules channel and the verification channel. There they press a button or solve a captcha. Only then does the bot assign the role that unlocks the rest of the server.
Setting it up in four steps
Button or captcha?
| Button | Captcha |
|---|---|
| One click and it is done. Keeps out accidental joins and simple automated accounts. | The bot shows an image with a sequence of digits that has to be typed in. Considerably harder to solve automatically. |
| Practically no hurdle for real users. | Costs a few seconds, on an open, advertised server that is worth it. |
The captcha always stays an image, even if you have set embeds everywhere else. The reason is obvious: if the number were there as text, any script could read it.
Wording the message
The verification panel is the first message a new member reads from your server. It is worth writing more there than just “Click here”, and briefly saying what it is about and what happens afterwards.
Title, text, color and button label are set in the panel, as an image card, as an embed or both. Here too: without an active subscription the embed version appears, not nothing at all. Details under Image cards or embeds.
Interplay with the account age gate
Verification checks whether somebody is a human. It does not check whether the account was only created yesterday. That is what the account age gate is for: it turns away accounts that are younger than a number of days set by you, by kick, by ban or with a quarantine role for manual review.
Together the two make an effective combination: the gate keeps freshly created throwaway accounts away, verification takes care of the rest.
Common pitfalls
- The button does nothing. Almost always the bot role sits below the verification role. Discord then silently refuses to assign it.
- New members do not see the channel. The verification channel has to be visible to
@everyone, it is the only exception to the lockdown. - Existing members are locked out. They do not have the new role yet. Assign it to everyone once before you take the permissions away from
@everyone. - The captcha is not accepted. The characters are distorted on purpose; after repeated failed attempts the bot generates a new image.