FAQ 💬

Quick answers to the questions server owners ask most — permissions, the dashboard, jail, commands, and where your data lives.

Setup & permissions

What permissions does BMO actually need?

The invite link on bmobot.bot requests exactly what the modules use: Manage Roles (jail, self roles, booster roles), Manage Channels (jail channel setup, voice rooms), Kick & Ban Members, Manage Messages, Moderate Members (timeouts), and View Audit Log (so logs can say who deleted a channel or banned someone, not just that it happened).

If you remove one of these later, the related feature fails quietly or reports a permission error — nothing else breaks.

BMO says it "cannot moderate this member." Why?

Discord only lets a bot manage members whose highest role is below the bot's own highest role. BMO checks this before every jail or ban and tells you when it applies. Two more protections are built in on purpose:

The server owner and administrators can never be jailed or banned through BMO.
A moderator can't act on someone with an equal or higher role than their own (the server owner is exempt from this check).

If BMO can't touch anyone, its role is almost certainly sitting too low in the role list. See the next question — it's a 10-second fix.

How do I move BMO's role up?

Open Server Settings → Roles in Discord, find BMO's role, and drag it above every role it should manage — your member roles and the jailed role at minimum. Only the server owner or someone with Manage Roles can do this. No bot command is needed; Discord applies the change instantly.

Who is allowed to use the moderation commands?

Out of the box, only administrators can use /jail, /unjail, and /ban. To let your moderator team use them without giving everyone Administrator, tell BMO which roles count as moderators:

/setadmin add @Moderators — allow a role
/setadmin remove @Moderators — take it back
/setadmin list — see who's currently allowed

Only administrators can change this list, so it can't be self-granted.

The dashboard

Who can open the dashboard for my server?

Anyone with Manage Server or Administrator permission on your server (the owner always qualifies). They sign in with their own Discord account at bmobot.bot — there's nothing to share or configure.

Access is re-checked live on every page load, not just at sign-in: if a moderator leaves your server or loses Manage Server, their dashboard access for that server ends immediately, even if they're still signed in.

How do I replay the guided tour?

Click the ✨ Tour button in the header — it's on both the server list and each server's Overview page. The tour offers itself automatically on your first visit; the button replays it any time, for example when a new co-owner takes over.

What is the member lookup page?

bmobot.bot/lookup turns a numeric Discord user ID into a name, avatar, and profile badges. It's handy when a log entry, ban list, or audit trail gives you only an ID and you want to know who it was. Paste the ID (17–20 digits) and hit Find.

The page is public — no sign-in needed — but anonymous visitors are limited to 15 lookups per minute. Go over and you'll see "Too many lookups — wait a minute and try again." Signed-in dashboard users skip the limit entirely.

Jail

What exactly happens to someone's roles when they're jailed?

Jailing does three things, in order:

Saves a snapshot of the member's current roles.
Adds the jailed role and removes their other roles. Stripping is deliberate: Discord permission math lets any role that allows viewing a channel override the jail role's deny, so a jailed member who kept their roles could still see and talk in channels.
Restores the saved roles automatically when they're unjailed.

Roles Discord itself controls — bot roles and the Server Booster role — are never touched, and @everyone is left alone.

Can a jailed member escape by leaving and rejoining?

No. The jail record (saved roles, reason, and when) is stored per server and survives both bot restarts and the member leaving. If they rejoin, BMO re-applies the jail role on the way in and posts a notice in the jail channel. Their saved roles stay stored and come back only when a moderator runs /unjail.

What can a jailed member actually see?

Only the jail channel (created as ⋆jail). Everywhere else they're denied viewing, sending, reacting, creating threads, and connecting or speaking in voice channels. Channels created after setup get the same treatment automatically the moment they're made.

If permissions ever look out of sync — say, after a big channel reshuffle — run /jailre to re-apply the jail rules to every channel in one go.

Jail said "Jail is not set up." What do I do?

Run /jailsetup once (or use the Jail step on the dashboard's Getting Started checklist). It creates the jailed role and the jail channel, then locks the permissions on every channel. After that, /jail @user reason works immediately. If the role or channel is ever deleted, running /jailsetup again rebuilds them.

Commands

Do I have to use slash commands?

No — BMO's commands are hybrid: every day-to-day command works both as a slash command and as a classic prefix command with ! (and z! works too, if another bot already uses !). Same command, same result:

Task	Slash	Prefix
Jail someone (reason required)	`/jail @user reason`	`!jail @user reason`
Release them	`/unjail @user reason`	`!unjail @user reason`
Ban (mention, ID, or username)	`/ban user reason`	`!ban @user reason`
Warn a member	`/warn @user reason`	`!warn @user reason`
See someone's warnings	`/warnings @user`	`!warnings @user`
Check the bot is alive	`/ping`	`!ping`

Slash commands show you the expected options as you type, so they're the friendlier choice for new moderators. The full list is on the All commands page.

The bot isn't responding to commands. What should I check?

Is BMO online in your member list? Try /ping.
Prefix commands need the message to start with ! or z! exactly — no space before the command name.
Moderation commands answer only people on the allowed list — see "Who is allowed to use the moderation commands?" above.
Can BMO see and send messages in that channel? Channel permission overrides beat server permissions.

Logs & data

How do log channels work?

BMO posts what happens in your server — joins and invites used, deletions, bans, jail actions — as tidy embeds into channels you pick. The main audit log channel is set from your server's settings pages on the dashboard, or with !logs set #channel. Protection modules like anti-nuke and member guard have their own log channel pickers on their settings pages, so security alerts can go somewhere quieter than the general log.

Until a log channel is set, events simply aren't posted — nothing queues up or goes missing elsewhere. Naming the person behind an action (who deleted the channel, who banned the user) needs the bot's View Audit Log permission.

Where does the analytics data come from?

The dashboard's Analytics page is built from events BMO itself witnesses while it's in your server: members joining (including which invite brought them in), leaving, their first message, voice activity, server boosts, and moderation actions like jails, bans, and timeouts. Everything is stored in the bot's own local database — it isn't pulled from Discord's built-in server insights and isn't sent to any third party.

Because BMO records events as they happen, analytics start from the day it joined — it can't reconstruct history from before that. Invite tracking additionally needs the bot's Manage Server permission, since Discord gates the invite list behind it.

Still stuck?

Check the module pages in the sidebar for feature-specific detail — start with Moderation & jail — or ask in the support server linked from the site footer. The Getting started guide also walks the whole setup end to end.