Knowledge Bank
3 min read
The Discord embed maker, and treating a webhook like a password
Build a proper embed instead of dropping a bare link, and guard the webhook URL that sends it.
Not sure if Promote is your weak phase? The free 3-minute workflow audit will tell you.
Tell the communities you're in is step 43 of the 47, and in a Discord that usually means dropping a link into a channel where it scrolls past looking like every other link. An embed is the difference between a drop and a post. This builds one with a live preview, then sends it to your server through a webhook.
Treat the webhook URL like a password
You get it from Server Settings, then Integrations. Keep it out of public messages, screenshots and shared docs. A leaked webhook is somebody else posting in your server under your bot's name until you delete it.
What an embed can hold
| Part | Limit |
|---|---|
| Title, with an optional link | 256 characters |
| Description | 4,096 characters |
| Fields, the small labelled blocks underneath | 25, and three inline ones sit side by side |
| Message above the embed | 2,000 characters |
| Whole embed | 6,000 characters |
There is also an author line with an icon, a large image under the embed, a small thumbnail top right, a footer with its own icon, and a timestamp.
The parts that actually get read
Almost none of that budget should be used. An embed announcing a video wants a title that reads as a title, one or two lines of description, the thumbnail, and the link. That is it.
The 4,096-character description exists for bots posting patch notes. Filling it for a video announcement produces a wall that people scroll past faster than they would have scrolled past the bare link you were trying to improve on.
Fields are the most over-used part. Three inline fields sitting side by side look organised and are usually three labels nobody needed, so reach for them when you genuinely have three short parallel facts, like runtime, topic and a timestamp.
Colour does the recognition work
Set the same colour every time you post. In a busy server the colour bar down the left edge is what people register before they read anything, and a consistent one turns your posts into something recognisable rather than one more bot message.
Matching it to your channel's palette is the obvious move, and the palette extractor will give you the hex code if you have never written it down.
Read the room before you post
An embed makes a post look more official, which cuts both ways. In a server that somebody else owns, a big branded card can read as an advert where a short human message would not.
The rule for this step is the same everywhere: check what the server allows, and if self-promotion is limited to one channel or one day, that is where this goes. A well-designed embed in the wrong channel is still a rule broken, and it is more visible than a plain link.
The JSON is there if you need it
You can copy the raw webhook JSON instead of sending, which is what you want if the post is going through an automation rather than by hand.
Keep reading
The judgement about where and how to post belongs to telling your community, and the wider list is covered in posting it where you already post. If you run the server yourself, the community tab guide covers the same job on YouTube.