Setting-up-discord.py

Step 1 | Python

The first step in setting up discord.py is installing python, python is the languge discord.py has been developed in. To start the installation head over here, then hover over "Downloads" and press download, you want to download python 3.8

IMPORTANT:
When running the installer it is very important to tick the box that says Click here to enable PATH since that will allow us to use python from everywhere

After that just run the automatic installation

Step 2 | Verifying python

We need to verify that python was installed correctly, the method of verification differs from OS to OS but i will go over windows and unix systems

Windows:
First we need to open a terminal, this is also the window from where we will run the bot
To open up the terminal click [WIN] + [R] on your keyboard and a window named run should pop up, here your should type cmd and a black window should appear, i will refer to this as the terminal

To check that we have python installed successfully we use the command py -3 --version or python --version.
The terminal should tell us the version you installed from the website (note this only works for python 3.8 since we gave the command the -3 flag)

Unix:
Depending on your os you might have diffrent ways to the open the terminal if you go into you search bar area and type terminal you should be able to get it up, otherwise look up how to open the terminal on your system.

To check the installation type python3.8 --version or python3 --version and verify that it is version 3.8

Step 3 | The installation

In order to use discord with python we need to install their API (application programming interface) so that we can talk to discord though python
This method agein differs from os to os

This is the general idea

# Linux/macOS
python3.8 -m pip install -U discord.py
or
python3 -m pip install -U discord.py

# Windows
py -3 -m pip install -U discord.py
or
python -m pip install -U discord.py

If you want to be able to use voice features write "discord.py[voice]" instead of discord.py. (Depending on your OS you may need to remove both ").

If you want more information on installing discord.py check the offical documenation here

Step 4 | Getting to the code

In order to run the code we need to navigate to our files using the terminal, the unix and windows terminal are again different, so i will go over each again.

Windows:
In the windows terminal we have 3 main commands

dir (lists folders and files in your current directory)
cd <folder> (change directory or move into a diffrent folder)
cd .. (move out of the current folder)

Unix:
The unix terminal is a bit more complicated but i will go over the basics here too

ls (This lists all files in your current directory you can also add the -l flag to make it a list)
cd <folder> (Changes the directory)
cd .. (Moves you out of a folder)

Using these 3 commands you should be able to move around in the terminal you want to move into your work folder

Step 5 | Running the code

Once you have located your files you want to run the code, this is again diffrent.

Windows:

py -3 <file>.py
or
python -m <file>.py

Unix

python3.8 <file>.py
or
python3 <file>.py

And once the bot tells you its ready it should go online