Discord crossposting explained: Publish, Follow and announcement channels
What is an announcement channel?
An announcement channel is a Discord text channel, marked with a megaphone icon, that other servers can Follow. A message posted there is only seen in your server at first. When someone presses Publish on it, Discord sends it to every server that follows the channel, where it appears as a regular message (Discord: Announcement Channel FAQ).
What is crossposting?
Crossposting is the same thing as publishing. Publish is the button's name in Discord, and crosspost is the name Discord's API gives the same action, so bots and developer tools say "crosspost" where the app says "Publish". A crossposted message and a published message are the same message.
Once a message is published:
- Edits you make to it show up in the following servers too.
- Deleting it removes it there as well, leaving an "[Original Message Deleted]" note.
- @everyone and @here mentions, and other mentions like them, are not passed on.
Discord lets each channel publish 10 messages per hour. See How to publish messages past Discord's limit for what happens past it.
How does another server follow an announcement channel?
- Open the announcement channel in the server you want updates from and press Follow.
- Pick your server and the channel the posts should go to. Only servers and channels where you have the Manage Webhooks permission are listed.
- Press Follow.
From then on, each published message arrives in the channel you picked, posted by a bot named after the server it came from. The channel you pick can't be an announcement channel itself. To stop, open Server Settings → Integrations → Channels Followed and delete that server's entry (Discord: Channel Following FAQ).
Who can press Publish?
Members with Send Messages in the channel can publish their own messages. Members with Manage Messages can publish anyone's. Discord's own advice is to give these only to trusted members.
Why do messages from bots and webhooks stay unpublished?
Discord never publishes a message on its own. Every message, whoever posted it, waits until someone presses Publish. When a bot, a webhook, or an RSS or news feed posts the message, nobody is there to press it, so the following servers don't get it unless the bot that posted it also publishes it, or a moderator does it by hand.
That is what Auto Publisher (auto-publisher.gg) is for. It presses Publish on every message posted in the announcement channels you enable, from members, bots, webhooks and feeds alike, and is free for up to 5 channels per server.
Setup takes three steps, covered in How to auto-publish announcement channel messages. To publish only some messages, see How to auto-publish only some messages.
How do I create an announcement channel?
Discord offers announcement channels only to servers with Community turned on.
Turn on Community (once per server):
- Open Server Settings from the menu under your server's name.
- Select Enable Community, then Get Started.
- Go through the steps. Discord requires a verification level, the explicit media content filter, a rules channel and a channel for Discord's community updates.
- Agree to the guidelines and press Finish Setup (Discord: Enabling Your Community Server).
Create a new announcement channel: press the + next to a channel category, choose Announcement as the channel type, name it and press Create Channel.
Or convert an existing text channel: open Edit Channel, switch on Announcement Channel and press Save Changes.
Post a message in it and the Publish option appears on it. For every command and permission Auto Publisher uses, see How It Works.