Add image cards to your Discord welcome messages

Before you start

• A Build Discord Bots bot that is online, invited to your server, and already posting a text welcome message. If it is not, follow the welcome messages guide first; the card is only sent together with that message.
• A Pro plan or an active 14-day Pro trial. On Free, the card section shows the notice “Welcome card images are available on Pro.” instead of its controls. Text and embed welcome messages remain available on Free.
• In the welcome channel, the bot needs View Channel, Send Messages, Embed Links and Attach Files. The card is a file attachment, so Attach Files is the permission that text-only greetings never needed.
• For the Image background template only: a picture you are allowed to use, hosted at a public HTTPS address, no larger than 2 MB and no more than 4096 pixels on either side.

1. Know what the card adds to a welcome

   The card does not replace your welcome message. When a member joins, the module still posts the mention, an embed titled Welcome! with your Welcome Message text, the member's avatar as a thumbnail and a You are member #N field. With the card switched on, the same Discord message also carries a PNG file named welcome-card.png, which Discord displays under the embed.

   Every card is 960 by 360 pixels. The member's avatar sits in a white-ringed circle on the left. To its right is a bold headline, Welcome, followed by the member's server display name, and below it a Member # line with the server's member count at the moment of the join. Discord includes bots in that count, so treat it as a friendly milestone rather than an exact join order. A 14-pixel accent stripe runs down the left edge and a short accent bar sits under the member line.

   The headline and member line follow the bot's server language. English, French, Spanish and Swedish have their own wording, for example Bienvenue for French and Välkommen for Swedish. The card is drawn by the Build Discord Bots platform rather than inside your bot's container, so there is nothing to install and no image library to keep updated.

2. Open the Welcome card image section

   Open your bot, go to its Modules tab, and click the gear button titled Settings on the Welcome & Goodbye card. In Module Settings, pick the server in the Server selector first: card settings, like every other welcome setting, are stored separately for each server your bot is in.

   The welcome settings have three panels: Channels, Messages and Automation. The card controls are in Channels, below Channel Routing, in a box titled Welcome card image with a Pro badge. Its description reads Send a server-rendered card with the member avatar and member number. Above the panels, the Welcome Messages status chip should show as enabled. A card can only travel with a welcome message, so turning on the card while Enable welcome messages is off produces nothing.

3. Pick a template and an accent colour

   Turn on Enable welcome card. Its description, The card is added as a PNG attachment to the regular welcome message, is literal: nothing about your text greeting changes. Then open Card template, which has three options. Dark is a flat near-black background and the safest choice for readability. Gradient runs diagonally from your accent colour at the top left to a deep indigo at the bottom right. Image background uses a picture you host, with a dark overlay of roughly 54 percent drawn on top so the white text stays legible.

   Accent colour takes a six-digit hex value such as #57F287, which is also the default green. A three-digit value like #fff, a colour name, or a value without the leading # is not rejected with an error. The card quietly falls back to #57F287, so if your colour never appears, check the format first. With Gradient, the accent fills a large part of the card behind white text. A mid or dark tone, such as your brand colour darkened a little, reads better than a pale pastel.

4. Host a background image that will load

   The Background image URL field only appears when Card template is set to Image background. There is no upload button; paste the address of an image that is already online. The field's hint, A public HTTPS image; private and local addresses are blocked, is enforced when each card is drawn, not when you save. Saving a bad address therefore still shows Saved ✓, and the problem only appears at the next welcome.

   The platform downloads your picture itself, and it only accepts addresses that meet these rules. The address must start with https:// and must not contain a port number or a username and password. It must resolve only to public internet addresses, so localhost, home-network and other private addresses are refused. The server must answer directly with the image and an image content type. A redirect, a login page or an HTML preview page counts as a failure, which is common with share links from cloud drives. The file must be 2 MB or smaller, at most 4096 pixels wide and 4096 pixels high, and no more than 16 megapixels in total.

   The card's 960 by 360 shape has an 8:3 ratio. Your image is scaled to cover the whole card and centred, so anything outside that ratio is cropped from the edges. A 1920 by 720 image fits exactly. Keep the left third calm, because the avatar sits there, and do not bake text into the picture, where it would collide with the headline. A downloaded background is cached for ten minutes. If you replace the file at the same address, recent joins may keep the old picture for a while; upload under a new file name when you need the change to show immediately. If you pick Image background but leave the URL empty, the card uses the plain dark base instead.

5. Save, then check the card with testwelcome

   Click Save Settings and wait for Saved ✓. If the dialog warns that live sync failed, restart the bot from its detail page and wait for it to show online before testing, because the bot may otherwise still be using the settings it had before.

   You do not need a new member to see the card. In any channel of the configured server, a member with the Manage Server permission can use testwelcome. The bot posts the complete welcome in the configured welcome channel, with you as the member, so the card shows your avatar and display name. It then replies Test welcome message sent! in the channel where you typed the command. Look at the result on both desktop and phone: Discord scales the image down on small screens, and a busy background that looks fine on a monitor can make the name hard to read.

   Once the test looks right, confirm it with one real join from a consenting human account. Real joins from bot accounts are skipped entirely, so inviting a second bot will not produce a card. The testgoodbye command is useful for comparison. Goodbye messages and the optional welcome DM never include a card; only the public welcome message does.

6. Fix a welcome that arrives without its card

   The module is built to fail open. For each join, the bot asks the platform for a signed card that is valid for one minute and waits up to seven seconds for it. If anything goes wrong, the welcome is sent without the attachment rather than not at all. This keeps a card problem from silencing your greeting, but it also means a broken card produces no error in Discord. Work through the likely causes in order.

   First, reopen Settings and confirm that the right server is selected and Enable welcome card is still on. Next, check the plan: the platform checks Pro access again every time it draws a card, so after a trial ends or a subscription lapses, cards stop while the text greeting continues. If you use Image background, switch Card template to Dark, save and use testwelcome again. If the Dark card appears, the background address is breaking one of the rules above. If no card appears even with Dark, restart the bot so it picks up the saved settings, then contact support with the time of the test.

   If nothing is posted at all after you turned the card on, look at the channel permissions. The card and the text are sent as one Discord message, so a bot that lacks Attach Files in that channel has the whole message rejected, text included. Also check where the message is going. When Welcome Channel ID is empty, the module looks for a text channel named welcome, welcome-goodbye or greetings, which may not be the channel you are watching.

7. Keep the card consistent over time

   Treat the background like any other asset your server depends on. Host it somewhere that will not expire or move, and write down the template, accent value and image address so another moderator can restore them. When you rebrand, change the accent and background together and run testwelcome once, instead of editing several fields across multiple saves and hoping the final result looks right.

   Card settings are per server. If your bot serves several communities, each one needs its own switch, template and colour, and each should get its own test in its own welcome channel. If the bot owner's account moves from Pro to Free, the saved card settings are kept, but no card is drawn. Members simply receive the text and embed greeting until Pro access returns.