How do I create Reaction Roles on Discord with Hydra?

What is "Reaction Roles" and why does Hydra have it?

"Reaction Roles" is a well-known and highly popular feature used across various Discord community servers! It enables admins to configure easy-to-grab color roles, integrate user verification systems, offer pronouns menus and so much more! However, most of the implementations that bots offer out there lack customizability and aren't really easy to use either.
In addition to that, "Reaction Roles" are based on an old system of interacting with messages, so called "reactions". Discord started adding ways of easier interaction a few months ago, including message components like buttons or select menus, and these are hardly supported by other services as well.

We - the creators of Hydra - committed to providing easy-to-use and powerful features, and our first take on this was delivering the perfect solution for "Reaction Roles" on Discord.

How do I create my first "Reaction Roles" message?

This process is pretty straightforward - open up the dashboard, select your Discord server and navigate to the "Reaction Roles" tab.
Continue by inserting a proper name for your configuration, don't worry - you can always rename it later on.


The next step is to select the Discord text channel in which the message should be sent - make sure to select the right one, you can't change it after saving the configuration!


Now you're ready to add your first option, click the "Add Option" button and you'll see a new panel popping up.


Inside of this modal you'll be configuring the option itself and all of its actions that are triggered by selecting the option.


Options can be one of buttons, select menus or reactions - we highly recommend to use buttons for your setups since their user-experience is the smoothest. For more complex configurations select menus are the perfect fit, since they allow quite a few more options to select and can be theme-structured or similar.
On a non-upgraded Discord server you can add up to 10 buttons, 1 select menu or 8 reactions on one message. Premium users are only limited by Discord's restrictions, they can even mix up option types!


You can customize the options by choosing a unicode or custom emoji, changing the label and style of the button or inserting an explaining placeholder to your select menus. All of the configuration possibilities should be self-explanatory though!



Once you've custom-tailored your option to your liking you can proceed with adding actions to your option. These will be executed when a user selects the option by interacting with it, for instance clicking a button on the message.
You can choose from various action types, the most common being "Add a role".


Configuring this action is super easy, just open the roles selector and click on the role you want the user to interact with.


The two other role-related action types are just as easy to configure as the first one - except now you're allowed to select more than just one role. When a user interacts with the "Add multiple roles" action they're able to receive more than one role at a time! The "Add a random role" action supplies them with a random one out of a pre-configured pool of roles. Both of these advanced action types are only usable on upgraded Discord servers.


We also provide two action types for sending messages, a normal and a hidden one. The latter uses Discord's new ephemeral message feature, so only the user interacting with the option can read the sent message.
You can configure the messages sent with our powerful message builder to your liking! Just fill in the fields you'd like to have content.



Premium users are allowed to add more than just one action to their options.

After configuring your options with their corresponding actions you can - if required - sort your options by toggling "Sorting" and dragging the options to another position.



In order to further personalize your "Reaction Roles" message you can edit the auto-generated bound message by toggling "Editing".


You can now fill the message with custom content, just like you did with the message send action.


Premium users are able to provide a message link to a custom user message to which Hydra will add the configured options.



If you want to further customize your configuration you can also specifically white- or blacklist certain roles from interacting with this message. Just enable the correct access mode and select as many roles as you prefer.



Another handy setting you can configure is the execution type - it allows you to restrict members from toggling, or force them to only being able to remove roles.


Once you feel comfortable with your current message configuration you can hit "Save" and Hydra will immediately post the generated message or add the options to the custom user message.


In order to switch between configurations you'll just have to open the corresponding dropdown menu and select the message you want to edit. Just remember to hit "Save" again after altering your configuration.


Premium users are allowed to create more than just three configurations.

If there are any questions left about Hydra's "Reaction Roles" feature, feel free to leave a message in our support server and we'll get back to you!