Customizing Discobot for your site

[Discourse]

This guide explains how to customize Discobot, the built-in assistant bot in Discourse, to better match your community’s persona and needs.

Required user level: Administrator

Discobot is a special user in your Discourse community that helps new members learn about the platform. As an administrator, you can customize various aspects of Discobot to better fit your community’s style and requirements.

Configuring Discobot’s site settings

Discobot’s behavior is controlled by several site settings found under the Plugins settings category (search for “narrative bot” in Admin > Settings). Key settings include:

• discourse_narrative_bot_enabled: Enables or disables the Discobot plugin entirely. Default: true.
• disable_discourse_narrative_bot_welcome_post: When enabled, prevents Discobot from sending a welcome post to new users. Default: true (welcome post is disabled on new installations).
• discourse_narrative_bot_welcome_post_type: Controls the type of welcome post. Options are “New user track” (starts the interactive tutorial) or “Welcome message” (sends a simple welcome message). Default: new_user_track.
• discourse_narrative_bot_welcome_post_delay: Number of seconds to wait before sending the welcome post. Default: 0.
• discourse_narrative_bot_ignored_usernames: A list of usernames that Discobot should not interact with. Default: discourse.
• discourse_narrative_bot_disable_public_replies: When enabled, prevents Discobot from replying in public topics. Default: false.

On new installations, disable_discourse_narrative_bot_welcome_post defaults to true, meaning Discobot will not automatically message new users. To enable Discobot’s welcome post, set this to false.

Modifying Discobot’s user profile

To customize Discobot’s profile:

1. Go to Admin > Users and select the Discobot user.
2. Select “Preferences” or click “Visit this user’s preferences page to edit their profile”:
   
   

Once in the Preferences section, you can modify the following settings:

Account settings

• Name: Click the “Edit” button to change Discobot’s name.
• Image: Click the “Edit” button to upload a new avatar image.
• After making changes, click the “Save Changes” button.

If you change Discobot’s name, remember to also update its “About me” bio in the Profile section. The default bio references Discobot by description rather than username, but you may want to review it to ensure it still makes sense with the new name.

Profile settings

Customize Discobot’s profile information as needed.

Email settings

Adjust email-related settings as needed.

Updating Discobot’s welcome message

All of Discobot’s text — including the welcome message, tutorial steps, and other responses — can be customized via Appearance > Site Texts in the admin panel (/admin/customize/site_texts).

To find and edit a specific message:

1. Go to Discobot’s profile (https://example.discourse.com/u/discobot/summary) and select “Messages”.

2. Click on “Sent”.

3. Find a greeting message that you want to modify.
   

   

4. Copy a unique part of the message, such as “I’m only a robot”.
   

   

5. Navigate to the Admin Interface (https://example.discourse.com/admin)

6. Go to Appearance > Site Texts (https://example.discourse.com/admin/customize/site_texts)

7. Paste the copied text into the search window. When the greeting message appears, click “Edit”.
   

   

8. Update the greeting message and click “Save Changes”.
   

   

You can also search for discourse_narrative_bot in Site Texts to browse all of Discobot’s customizable text strings directly.

Limitations and additional information

• You can reuse existing variables in messages (like %{username} or %{discobot_username}), but you cannot add new ones.
• Discobot must remain an administrator; this role cannot be removed.
• You can customize the body content of tutorial steps but you cannot add, remove, or reorder steps.

For further customization needs or feature requests, consider posting in the #feature category.

Last edited by @hugh 2024-07-19T02:45:16Z

Last checked by @hugh 2024-07-19T02:45:34Z

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