Setting Up Discord Verification: Which Method Stops Which Problem

Verification is a door in front of your server. New members first see a single channel, complete one step there and then receive the role that lets them see everything else.

That sounds like a setting you click once. In practice it is a trade-off: every hurdle that stops a bot also stops a few real people. The right verification is therefore not the strictest one, but the lightest one that solves your actual problem.

The problem first, then the method

Before picking a method, ask what you actually want to keep out. The four methods in AlphaCloud each stop something different:

Method	Stops	Costs real members
Button	bots that only post messages	almost nothing
Math task	bots that also press buttons	a few seconds
Discord login	members of specific other servers	one Discord sign-in
External link	whatever your external service checks	depends on the service

The button is enough for most servers. Typical spam accounts post links into every visible channel and never click anything. A single click already separates them from everyone else.

The math task is worth it when you still see automated joins despite the button: accounts that verify in waves and start spamming right away. A small sum is trivial for a person and a real obstacle for a simple script.

Discord login is the only method that knows something about the member: they sign in with Discord once, and the bot sees which other servers they are on. You need that for exactly one case, the server blacklist (more on that below). Without a blacklist it only adds a sign-in and gives you nothing for it.

The external link is for servers that already run their own checking service. AlphaCloud sends the member there instead of checking itself.

Setting it up in five steps

1. Take away @everyone's view of every channel except the verification channel, and create a role with full access.
2. Enable the module in the web panel and pick the verification channel.
3. Set the roles granted after verification, meaning the role from step 1.
4. Optional: roles to remove. Useful if new members first get a role like "Unverified", for example through the Auto Role module.
5. Pick the method and save. The panel then posts the message with the button into the channel by itself.

You change the look and text of that message with the Message Builder. The verify button is always attached automatically, so it cannot be deleted by accident.

The two mistakes that break almost every setup

When "verification does not work", it is almost always one of two causes.

The role sits above the bot's role. Discord only lets a bot assign roles that are below its own in the role list. If the member role is above it, everyone presses the button and nothing happens. The fix is to drag the AlphaCloud role up in the server settings. Why Discord works this way is covered in detail in Discord Roles and Permissions.

@everyone still sees everything. Then verification is decoration: whoever ignores the button still reads and writes everywhere. After setting it up, use "View server as role" once to check what a brand new member actually sees.

The server blacklist: who comes from where

The blacklist is the strongest feature of the module and the one most often misunderstood. You enter the IDs of servers whose members you do not want, such as known raid servers, alt account farms or cheat communities. Anyone who is a member of one of those servers at sign-in is not verified and gets a direct message with the reason.

Three things worth knowing:

• It only works with Discord login. That is the only way the bot sees a member's server list. When you enable the blacklist, the panel switches the method automatically and locks the choice.
• It does not check only once. Someone who verifies cleanly today and joins a blocked server next week is caught at the next re-check. It runs every 48 hours on the free plan and every 6 hours with Premium.
• An entry with zero hits after months is usually a typo in the ID. That is why the panel shows, per entry, how many people it actually blocked, next to the name the bot resolves for that ID itself. If the name does not match what you meant to enter, the ID is wrong.

The re-check had a trap in it that we found while writing this article: if Discord was briefly unreachable during a check, that was treated as if the member had revoked their sign-in. They then dropped out of the re-check for good, and the log showed a wrong message. A short outage is now simply retried in the next round.

What verification does not solve

Verification checks whether a person presses the button. It does not check whether that person means well. Against coordinated attacks with real accounts, other tools help more:

• Account age keeps out accounts created only a few days ago, the typical material for raids.
• Honeypot is a channel no real member writes in. Anyone who posts there is almost certainly a bot.
• How these pieces fit together is in Protecting a Discord Server From Raids.

Every setting in detail is in the documentation for verification and the server blacklist (the documentation is in German).