Kotbo 4 min read
How to make an embed on Discord: a visual builder with a live preview
An embed is the boxed message with a colored bar, a title, fields and sometimes an image. Your Discord account can’t send one: only bots and webhooks can. With Kotbo, you build it on the dashboard with a live preview, then it posts it in the channel you pick
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Why you can’t make an embed yourself
The Discord client has no button to create an embed. Paste a link and Discord shows a preview, but you choose neither its title nor its color. That leaves two routes
A webhook
In a channel’s settings, Integrations, Webhooks, Discord gives you an address that accepts embeds. You still need a tool to write and send the message, and editing it later means going back through that tool
A bot
It posts the embed for you, can edit it later, and lets you build it in an interface instead of writing JSON
What an embed can hold
Every block is optional, but an empty embed won’t send. Here is what Kotbo’s builder fills in, in the order Discord displays it
- Plain text above the box, for a ping or a hook line
- An author, with an icon and a link on the name
- A title, clickable if you give it a URL, and a description
- The color of the side bar
- A thumbnail at the top right and a large image at the bottom
- Up to 25 fields, each with a title and a value, inline or stacked
- A footer with its icon, and the timestamp
How to build a Discord embed with Kotbo
It happens on dash.kotbo.fr, Rich messages page
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Pick the channel
The list shows your server’s channels. Kotbo needs permission to post there
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Fill in the blocks
Title, description, color, images, fields. The preview on the right updates as you type, rendered like Discord
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Save a template if you reuse it
The Save button keeps the embed in My Templates. Templates stay in your browser, on that device
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Publish
The Publish embed button sends it. The sent message’s ID fills in on its own
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Fix it later
Keep that ID in the Message ID field to edit the message in place. Discord only lets a bot edit its own messages: with another ID, Kotbo posts a new message
A quick embed without leaving Discord
For a short announcement, the /say command is enough. By default it’s limited to members who can manage messages
/say message:<text> salon:<channel>- The message option is required, salon picks where it goes, the current channel otherwise. With a titre, a couleur or anonyme, it goes out as an embed. With none of the three, it goes out as plain text from the bot
/say titre:<title> couleur:<color>- A title turns the message into an embed. Seven colors to pick from: blue by default, green, red, yellow, purple, dark or white
/say anonyme:True- Removes your name from the embed footer. Otherwise, the footer shows who sent it
Scheduling an announcement
A weekly announcement doesn’t need you every week. The Scheduled tasks page has a scheduled message type
- A text, an optional embed with title, description, color and image, and the target channel
- Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or a custom cron expression
- A send-once option, for a dated message that shouldn’t come back next year
- Mentions are off by default: a repeating message won’t ping the whole server by accident
Going further: campaigns and news
Two modules take over when one announcement isn’t enough
Campaigns
A series of messages placed around a start date, teaser included, sent in a channel or by DM. The audience filters by roles, level, time on the server or inactivity, and each step reports successful sends, failures and reactions
News
Staff writes announcements and release notes on the dashboard. Each one goes to its category’s channel and to a public RSS feed