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Important: ZEIT Now version 1 deprecation

Please note that as of 03/04/2020, ZEIT has deprecated Now version 1. This version allowed continuously-running services, which the technique described in this guide took advantage of. As of 01/05/2020, it will no longer be possible to create a new Now version 1 deployment.

This template has not been removed as it may still be helpful as a reference when deploying your Discord bot somewhere else.

Hopefully this template can be ported to another platform, such as Heroku.

Until then, be cautious when following this guide!

now-discordjs

This was a template for developing a discord.js bot to deploy on ZEIT's free Now deployment platform.

Quickstart

  1. Clone this repository
  2. Install and login to now
  3. Add your Discord bot token secret to now
  4. Build your bot
  5. Deploy with $ now

What is this?

If you've written a Discord bot, and want to run it on a Discord server, one option is to simply run it from your own computer. However, having to choose between keeping your PC running or letting your bot go offline isn't great.

A better option would be to deploy the bot to a remote platform where it can stay online 24/7 and operate independently of your own computer.

This project provided a template to deploy a bot written using the discord.js library to ZEIT's free Now deployment platform.

Note that because this project was set up for bots written in JavaScript, you will probably struggle to get it working for a bot written in any other language. In that case, try deploying it through Heroku or glitch.com, or with a paid VPS like a DigitalOcean droplet.

How to deploy your bot

Credits: parts of this guide are adapted from https://itnext.io/hosting-a-javascript-discord-bot-for-free-with-zeit-now-c140e27c6936.

Step 1: Clone this repository

To start off, clone this repository to a directory where you keep your projects.

$ git clone https://github.com/ImFeelingDucky/now-discordjs.git && cd now-discordjs

Step 2: Set up Now

Make a ZEIT account at https://zeit.co/signup.

Next, set up Now on your computer. You can do this by either simply installing the Now command-line interface with

$ npm install --global now

or by downloading the Now desktop app, which comes with a friendly GUI as well as the same command-line interface.

Finally, login to Now. Follow the prompts if you're using the desktop app, or run

$ now login

in your terminal and follow the instructions.

Step 3: Add your discord bot token

After setting Now up, you'll need to add your Discord bot's token to the project. Go to https://discordapp.com/developers/applications/, click on your bot's application, then click Bot in the Settings menu on the left, and copy your bot's 'token'.

Then run

$ now secrets add discord-token "PASTE_YOUR_TOKEN_HERE"

Step 4: Build your bot

Have fun writing your bot! Consult https://discord.js.org/#/docs/main/stable/general/welcome for documentation, guides and examples on writing a bot.

This template includes ESM magic, so you can import rather than require() without any Node.js trickery. That means start building in main.js not index.js.

Step 5: Deploy

Now you can simply deploy your bot. Be careful not to have multiple bots running at the same time, which can be problematic.

$ now

If you've updated your bot and want to redeploy the new version, first delete the deployment of the bot currently running. You can do this with

$ now rm now-discordjs

where now-discordjs is the name of the current directory. There will be some downtime when you are in between deployments. Then redeploy with the new code:

$ now

Deployment scaling is already defined in the provided now.json so the bot will always be scaled to one instance (so that it never goes offline or has more than one copy active). It has been configured to deploy this one instance to the bru1 region in Brussels, Belgium, but if Now supports a region closer to you which supports non-serverless deployments (iad1 does not, so cannot be used, for example) you can redefine this to whatever region that is.

Troubleshooting

  • If now is refusing to deploy your bot, make sure you've got a now.json file specifying "version": 1 in the project directory (this template provides one by default), and that you run now in the project directory.