 In this video, I'm going to give you an introduction to Discord so that you can understand the true value that there is in being on Discord and being a member of Discord communities. And there, indeed, is the point of Discord. It is a place for people to host online communities. It is merely the platform that people are using to host their communities. I think that some people get put off Discord for a couple of reasons. And the first one is the terminology. When people are saying, come and join my server. Come and join my Discord server. First of all, you might not know what Discord is. OK, let's get that out of the way. But the fact that it's called a server somehow makes it sound, I think, a bit technical from an IT perspective. So that conjures up those images. Nothing to be fearful about this. It's really quite simple as we'll see as we go forward. But I know from talking to people that that's what they've had. They've had this idea that it's maybe not for me. I'm not really into servers and things like that, and that sounds a bit too heavy for me. It's literally just a place for people's online communities. If you're in Facebook groups and things like that, there are distinct differences. Discord is certainly better for hosting online communities than Facebook groups. But it's just like that. It's a place for people to come together, chat, share information, share ideas, all of those sorts of things. So if you hear somebody saying, come and join my server, what they're actually saying is, hello, welcome. Come and join the community. Come and join the family. Come into my home. Come into my space. And we'll let's have a chat and start a conversation. It's totally all about that rather than anything from a technical point of view. Unless, of course, you're joining somebody's technical server where they're talking about that sort of stuff. So that's all it is. And the other thing that I think maybe people have had reservations about with Discord before is because it has been really heavily adopted and used by gamers certainly in the initial years. I think it started in around 2015. And for the first five years, it was really predominantly gamers that would have their gaming communities that would have Discord servers. So it had that sort of reputation as being, oh, it's a thing for gamers. It's not a thing for me. But like in the earlier days of Mac where everyone was like, oh, Macs are for graphic designers. They're not for the rest of us. And look at Macs now. Anyway, so that is just a little bit of a sort of preface to get out of the way regarding Discord. It's for everybody. It's for all communities of covering all different topics and things like that. And there's really nothing to it. So let's have a look at the Discord website first of all. You may well find that your route into Discord is by clicking on somebody's invite link where they're saying, hey, come and join my server. You can totally just get straight onto Discord and into Discord by clicking one of those. A little bit later when I put my Discord link up or when you find it in the description, then if you haven't got a Discord account, don't worry, you can just do this all at the time that you join and it's literally a couple of clicks away. So there's nothing complicated about doing this. But I will just show you the Discord website in any case. And of course, all of these links are in the description. So you can actually create an account up here. You've got this little login button. So you can click on that and then that will take you through either to a page like this to login. Or if you need an account, you haven't registered, then you can come in this way. I think that button only says Log in for me because I am already logged in. Or rather, it's recognising my browser, I should say. I've already got an account. But you can see this is all you need to start an account with Discord. I'm sure you know what sign up pages look like. An email, username and password, that's it. And it does ask for your age because they've got a minimum age limit of 13. So I'm guessing anyone watching this is pretty fine with the age limit. And then just click continue. Now once you've created your Discord account, then you can access Discord and access your Discord communities in really all of the ways. So either from any browser, you can just go to discord.com, log in. And then you can access all of your communities that way. Or you can also download the apps. And there is desktop apps for Mac and PC. And then also for all of the mobile devices as well. So there's an iPad app, an iPhone app and also for Android and things like that. So once you come to the homepage though, you can download those here. By the way, the point of me doing this video on my channel, I'm going to have a mini series if you like about Discord and some of the things about it. But really this is just in order to help to hopefully provide a little bit of education to people who watch my channel who may be interested in joining my Discord server so that you understand the value in doing that and why that might be of interest to you. So that's the reason for me making these videos. I'm not going to go and do a whole series in depth on Discord and how to do that because there is a far better resource for you to check out for that. And that is a site called Discord for Creators from my friend Keeley. And here if you want to know anything about Discord, this is the place to be. And of course, she's got a great Discord server. And in fact, I'm going to show you my Discord server a little bit later and everything that I've got there in terms of all the good things about it. Thanks to Keeley. All the other things that maybe not so great are my little experiments. So definitely check out Discord for Creators. You can join her Discord there. You can watch her videos. They'll go into far more depth about all the ins and outs of using Discord. And if you are a creator as well, then hands down the place to go because this will give you all you need to know about setting up your server and things like that. Plenty of training in here about how to do all of the stuff that I'm going to be talking about in terms of getting things set up and how I got mine set up. But then also if you just want the hands-free approach, Keeley can also do that for you as well and just actually get everything all up and running and looking like home for you in no time at all. So that's Discord for Creators. I'll leave a link to that in the description. Highly, highly recommend it if you want to know anything more about Discord. So definitely head over there. But for the time being, let's just have a quick look at what it looks like once you have actually signed up to Discord and you get into somebody's server. What is it? Well, it's basically, as I say, it's just their online community space. So let me show you what the app looks like. So this is now the app on desktop. And there are really a few different sort of terminologies that I'm going to explain to you over the next few minutes. So first of all, Discord servers, as I've said, these are just different communities that you are a member of. And these appear down the left-hand side here. So here we've got my community. This is my Take One Tech logo here, as you can see. And this is my Take One Tech community. I'm also a member of some other communities. So we've got DocRox community down here. We've got Discord for Creators, of course. Dina, Taylor, Silver Lining Homeplace. Great one there. We've also got Michelle from LBC Branding. And we've got a few others down here. So lots of different communities. So these are all different servers. These are all different communities. That's just what that terminology means. Now once you are in that particular community, you'll have basically this sidebar here that's basically the organization. And I know that might just seem a bit weird if you've come from the world of Facebook groups. What? Things are organized. You can be organized in your conversations with your community. Yes, you can. And that is what is so great about Discord. You've basically got different sort of topics if you like that you're going to talk about. So within Discord, you may hear people talking about, first of all, there's the servers. So we already know that that's just people's community spaces that they've got. You've then got categories and channels. Channels are basically just the themes of the conversation that you're having. So if you come into my server, we've got a few different areas over here. So for example, I've got the help section. So if you want any help, you've just new to Discord and you've joined my server, you need any help finding your way around. Like a little information post for you if you like as you've walked through the door of the server. Here you'll find lots of different links to different things like articles and stuff like that. And you'll also find in here, if you miss the link that I've posted in the description, you'll find the link to Discord for Creators because that's what I'm directing. Most people for help with Discord. And you can see here that it's basically a little bit like a forum where you've got a thread of conversations running through. And so this is where people are talking about all things related to getting set up and getting welcome. There is this other one here, which is the rules. So you'll find that most servers have some form of guidelines and things like that to just make sure that everyone knows the house rules when you walk into the house. And then you've got a place for introductions and announcements and things like that. So all of these things that I'm showing you at the moment, these are called channels. So this is another bit of terminology. A channel is nothing more than a sort of a theme of a conversation or something like that. So whatever it is that the topic is that you're talking about or that you've got collecting your conversations around, then these are called channels. Now you've also got something which is basically ways to group your channels which are called categories. So these are these little headings here. So like here I've got start here. So this area here is my category is start here. And all of these channels are related to, welcome to the group, introducing yourself, announcements, rules and all that sort of stuff. So that is a category. But this is a great way to sort of find your way around the server. So with mine, the way that I've structured this for the moment, obviously these sort of things are, the whole point about it being a community thing is that your community may tell you that they want a different layout, they want extra topics to talk about and things like that. It's a place for you to grow your community and grow with your community. But I've grouped my things into some rough sections. So I've got here and so I've called it a section, but as I say it's categories. It's like a grouping of different threads of chat. So here I've got a number of different channels in here. One for YouTube. So this is where I post my YouTube live streams, things like that. If I'm a guest appearance on any other, anyone else's show or anything like that, that appears in here. So you can see guest appearances. So I'm just using this as a place to let my community know where else they can find me that's off my channel if I've been interviewed on something and to help promote those other people's shows and things like that. And then you can obviously have chat around this as well. So if I'm on a particular show and somebody's got some commentary or things like that that they want to talk about saying, hey, you were rubbish or something like that, then you can go and do that in here as well. Although nobody does that sort of stuff, do they? I've got another one here for video ideas. So this is a place where if people watch my channel and they say, hey, you've been covering loads of things on stream deck, but one thing you've never covered is how to do X, Y and Z. Well, now I've got a place for my viewers to give me feedback rather than it just getting lost in comments because not everyone's going to see every comment. Whereas if you're a member of my Discord, I suppose I should just pop up this right now to mention. If you're not already, then head over to takeonetech.io slash discord and then you'll get the link to join the server. And once you do, if you've got any ideas for videos, you'd be able to pop them in here. And this is where a conversation can start because then other people who are in the community can say, hey, yeah, that's a great idea. And what about also adding in X, Y and Z as well? That sort of thing. So it's a place where these conversations can be organized. I've also got a section on courses. So I have got a number of different courses that are available that I do sort of separate to the channel, but as part of it really. So I've got an area here where people can see those and then also talk about them as well. I've got a section about my affiliate links. So often with different creators, I know this is the case for me. I want to support a creator and I know that they've talked about something, but I can't necessarily find that affiliate link. So I've just added this place in as a place to collect all of the different things that I am an affiliate of. So that if somebody wants to sign up for Kajabi, for example, they can go and grab my link here. And then I've also got a section for sort of my merch. Now all of that section is a little bit me, me, me, isn't it really? But I wanted to put that in just so that it was basically kind of like the hub of all of the things I'm doing and people can find that. But you can equally just, if you're sick of the site of me, you can always just hide that out of the way. And then down here is where I've got these other, this other category. So this category is all basically tech talk. So this is where I've then split it up into different channels, different topics if you like, that are all related to the sorts of things I cover on my channel. So I do talk a little bit about studio gear, not so much, but I do cover, you know, when I've got new lighting or the microphone or stuff like that. I do make videos about that. So there may be people who watch my channel who are really interested in that side of stuff, but maybe they're not so interested in e-cam live stuff because I don't, you know, they don't use e-cam live. I know lots of people watch my channel who are really heavy stream deck users but don't have any need or use for e-cam so they're not interested in that sort of thing. So here you can see the stream deck channel. So that would be the place where people can go to, you know, if they like what I'm creating on my channel and just want to be focused on only the stream deck side of stuff, then this would be the place to join those conversations. Similarly with sort of Mac automation, lots of people are not using stream deck or e-cam, but really into the keyboard maestro and all that sort of side of stuff that I cover. So here you can see, basically, I'm not going to go through all of these channels, but it is a way to just sort of organize these conversations in a really structured way. And you can just join in, you know, these conversations, whatever it is we're talking about. So here the e-cam live thread and things like that, if that is something you're interested in. And it's a case of, yeah, just going through and being able to participate. And so whatever community you join, you'll have something similar to this. Obviously the name of the channels are going to be different, the names of the way that you group them. This is all totally customizable if you are a content creator. And I'll be talking about this for content creators in one of the other videos in this series. I think I'm going to do about four of them. So I'll be just sort of touching on that. But like I say, Discord for Creators is definitely the resource to check out for that. But the other thing that you can do in here is you've also got, they call them voice channels, but they've actually expanded beyond voice to video. So you now can do basically have a space where you can actually talk on video or all voice with your community. So it combines some of the functionality of Zoom. So if you want to have regular meetings with your community, you can just do it all straight from in here. So it's keeping everything all in one place. And you don't need to have people dialing in to Zoom and things like that. I could literally come in here now. And if I just clicked on this, it would immediately just start up a channel. So I'm now in a voice channel. And it's just opened up off the screen. But I won't do a full demo of this. In fact, I'll just disconnect right now. But that is basically just opened up a window for me to be in a video call just as you would do in Zoom. So you can have multiple different participants all in their little boxes, just as you would with Zoom. And you can just do it all from within here. And people can sort of come and go. You can set different limits and different permissions and things like this on here so that you do have control over who can come in and when they can come in and all that sort of stuff. But basically, it's great to have it all in this one space. So you don't have people meeting on a Facebook group where they can't actually find anything because there isn't any organization. It's just a stream of, I was going to say consciousness, but sometimes they don't seem much conscious about it because of the way that it's structured. I often find myself thinking, I know someone mentioned that in that particular Facebook group, but there's no hope of me actually finding it now. The search is really lacking in Facebook. And you don't have the organization like you're seeing here. You also got, as well as the sort of video calls, you can also do voice. So you can do things that are just like Clubhouse as well. So not only a sort of a version of Zoom, but voice only. But you can also do things like Clubhouse where you can have like a stage. So people are there talking and then you can invite people up to participate in that as well. So it's kind of really all of these things with all of the benefits rolled into one package. It's kind of got the video and the voice calling. It's also got the Clubhouse effect. But then it's also got the structure and organization of a forum, things like that. But forums again can be overly complicated. This is really just sort of like, I suppose, two or three levels of organization. You've got your server. You've got the grouping of your different themes of your chat. And then you've got your chats and your conversations that you're having. And within that, you can create, then within that, you can create like a thread. So if you've got a particular conversation related to Ecamm Live, for example, within that you can then create one final layer where you just want to have a conversation about one particular part of it. And so that would be a bit like you might imagine an email thread or something like that. So that is basically how the different layers of it work, if you like. Now, that is all there is to it, really. It's a space, as I say, for people to come together. One final thing I'll say, though, about it, and certainly from a creator's point of view or if you're joining my server. So I've got some things down here for courses. And the other thing is, so where you've got your channels, the channels are represented by this little sort of hashtag sign, the little pound sign. You've also got some down here like this one. It's got a little padlock sign on it where it's a sort of basically a limited channel. And that means that you can control the levels of access that people have to different levels of your server. So when people come into my server, they'll have sort of access to all of the general conversation. But then if you have joined my Ecamm Live masterclass, for example, then as part of the masterclass, you get access to the Ecamm Live masterclass area on the server, same for the Zoom masterclass and some of these other ones that I'm going to be making shortly as well. So it does become a place where it's not just a sort of free for all, as it were, but you can just limit access and give people access to certain places. So if you do want to learn all about Ecamm Live as well, since we are talking about it, I do have my Ecamm Live masterclass. It's 150 plus videos. Shortly, I'm uploading some more today and tomorrow. That will basically take you from beginner through to advanced in Ecamm Live and lots of other things outside of that as well. You can sign up at ecammlivemasterclass.com. There's over $150 worth of bonuses included in the cost of the course. And the course is only $147. So you're $3 up basically. But it's your online resource for all things Ecamm Live and it's continually updated. You get lifetime access. So with any new versions of Ecamm Live that come out, you'll always know the place to go to stay abreast of all of the latest information. And as I've said, as part of this, also you will get access to that Ecamm Live masterclass channel in the Discord. So once you are doing the course, although it's all online, learn at your own pace, all that sort of stuff with pre-recorded videos, you've still got that community aspect. And that is just another great thing about Discord. It really helps you to sort of bring all of your community together and create these little spaces within your community. So that was the introduction to Discord. I hope you found that useful and hopefully it sort of helped to demystify it a little bit. I will just have to say obviously one more time, definitely head over and join my Discord at takeonetech.io slash Discord and help to grow that community and also help to shape it so that you can get the information that you want. It's the easiest way to get in contact with me as well if you've got any particular videos that you want to see or you want any further information on things that I've covered. Often comments get lost on YouTube. I see comments when they first come in but it's really terrible on YouTube Studio for actually sort of tracking comments and following along with a thread of a conversation that's not so easy to do that whereas Discord is not only a great place to have a conversation that I can then pick up and follow along with but also that other people can follow along with and benefit from as well. So there are people that are commenting now on videos that I made eight months ago that somebody else might have watched and had a similar question but because they're not following the comments in that particular thread, they're not getting the benefits of the feedback and questions that other people are asking. So that's why I'm so passionate about Discord. Now that I've finally seen the light, thanks to Keeley, she's helped me so much get this all up and running and really see the value that there is to me and so that's why I want to share that idea of the value that there is in it for you as well. That's all for this video but coming up next there'll be some more Discord videos that I'm going to be adding over the next few days so you can find out more about different aspects of Discord and you can find those over on the right-hand side. So until the next video, see you shortly.