Setting up Red Discord Bot

This guide walks you through setting up Red Discord Bot on ServerPrism, from creating the bot in Discord's developer portal to claiming owner and loading your first cogs.

Before you start

You'll need a Discord account and a server where you have the Manage Server permission.

1. Create your bot in the Discord Developer Portal

1. Go to discord.com/developers/applications and click New Application.
2. Give it a name (this is your bot's identity — pick something you're happy with), accept the terms, and click Create.
3. In the left sidebar, click Bot.
4. Under the bot's username, click Reset Token and copy the token somewhere safe. You'll paste it into ServerPrism in a moment. Treat this like a password — anyone with it can control your bot.

2. Enable Privileged Gateway Intents

This step is critical — Red will refuse to start without all three intents enabled, exiting with CONFIGURATION_ERROR (exit code 78).

Still on the Bot page, scroll down to Privileged Gateway Intents and toggle ON:

• Presence Intent
• Server Members Intent
• Message Content Intent

Click Save Changes at the bottom.

3. Invite the bot to your Discord server

1. In the left sidebar, click OAuth2 → URL Generator.
2. Under Scopes, tick bot and applications.commands.
3. Under Bot Permissions, tick the permissions you want it to have. For most setups, Administrator is the easiest starting point — you can tighten it later.
4. Copy the generated URL at the bottom, open it in a new tab, choose your Discord server, and authorise.

The bot will join your server but show as offline until you start it on ServerPrism.

4. Order Red Discord Bot on ServerPrism

1. Head to the Discord Bots category on our site and pick the Red Discord Bot product.
2. Choose a plan (1 GB RAM is plenty for most setups), pick a region close to you, and check out.
3. While ordering, you'll be asked for:
   • Discord Bot Token — paste the token from step 1.
   • Command Prefix — the character users type before commands, e.g. ! or <. You can change this later in Discord.
4. Once provisioned, the panel will install Red and start the bot. The first install takes a couple of minutes (pip installs + dependencies).

5. Claim ownership in Discord

When the bot is online, you need to tell Red who its owner is so you can run admin commands.

1. In Discord, DM your bot the command <set owner (replace < with your prefix).

2. Red will print a one-time confirmation token in the panel console — you'll see something like:

   Use the command [p]set owner XXXXXX in DM to confirm
   

3. Copy that confirmation token from the console, then DM the bot:

   <set owner XXXXXX
   

4. Red replies with "I now recognise you as my owner." You're done — admin commands work for you now.

6. Load your first cogs

Cogs are Red's plugins. To enable downloading and installing them:

<load downloader
<repo add aikaterna-cogs https://github.com/aikaterna/aikaterna-cogs
<cog install aikaterna-cogs trivia
<load trivia

Browse the Red Cogs index for hundreds more cogs. Each one has install instructions on its page.

Common issues

"redbot: command not found" on first start

The installer didn't finish. This was a known bug in our Red egg that's now fixed — if you're hitting it on a fresh install, open a support ticket and we'll reinstall the egg on your server.

"You need to configure the bot instance using redbot-setup prior to running the bot"

The instance config file is missing. Same as above — open a ticket and we'll patch it. Reinstalling the server from the panel will also fix it on freshly-deployed eggs.

Exit code 78 / "Red requires all Privileged Intents to be enabled"

Go back to step 2 above and enable all three privileged intents in the Discord Developer Portal. They're off by default.

Bot is online but doesn't respond to commands

Two common causes:

1. Message Content Intent is off — re-check step 2. Without this, the bot can't see message text.
2. You're using the wrong prefix — check your panel console for the prefix the bot booted with, or use @YourBot prefix in Discord (mentioning the bot always works regardless of prefix).

Changing the bot's prefix

<set prefix !

The new prefix takes effect immediately.

Getting help

For Red-specific questions, the official Red documentation is the best resource. For ServerPrism hosting questions — billing, plan changes, performance — open a support ticket and we'll get back to you.