Backups & Templates

One page, 7 tabs: Backups, Chat Logs, Templates, Sync, Export & Import, Settings, Commands. Everything long-running is a job the bot picks up, with a live console at the top of the tab showing its progress line by line.

1Backups

A backup captures the Discord server, and you choose what goes in. By default: server settings, roles, channels, pinned messages, emojis and stickers. Opt-in, because they are large, slow, or about members rather than the server: threads, forum posts, messages, bans, nicknames and role assignments. Messages are the newest 50 of each channel unless you ask for more, up to 250.

1. 1

   Create one

   Press Create Backup, or run /backup create. Arclo walks the server and writes a document. A server keeps up to 5 backups; at the limit you delete one before making another, so nothing vanishes behind your back.

2. 2

   Set a schedule, if you want

   Automatic backups, under your backups on the same tab (or /backup interval), takes one every 4 hours to every 30 days (every 24 hours unless you change it), counted from the last run. Each run replaces the previous automatic backup, and automatic backups don't count toward the 5.

3. 3

   Inspect it

   Open a backup to see what it holds, Preview as Discord to see the server it describes, Download it as JSON, or Share it as a template.

4. 4

   Load it

   Use this backup on its page, Rebuild this server from it in its card's menu, or /backup load. You choose what to restore and whether to delete the existing channels and roles first (both on by default), then type the server's name to confirm.

• Arclo needs Administrator to rebuild a server. Bot and booster roles are never touched, and a role above Arclo's own is left alone with a warning, so move Arclo's role to the top first.
• Roles are recreated highest first, so the saved hierarchy is reproduced rather than inverted.
• @everyone is matched by name, not by id. An id is meaningless once the document moves to another server.
• Restored messages are replayed through a webhook so the original authors' names and avatars survive, and they never ping anybody. Pins are pinned again.
• Attachments are not stored in the backup. Arclo fetches each one from its saved Discord link while restoring, and once that link has expired (Discord's file links last about a day) the message comes back with the file's name in its place.
• Your own backups from other servers are listed too, marked From another server. Loading one copies that server's layout into this one.

2Chat Logs

A chat log archives one channel, deeper than a backup would: up to 1,000 of its newest messages (250 by default), with up to 10 logs per server. Archive a channel before you clean it out. Repost into a channel, or /chatlog load, replays it anywhere, through a webhook that keeps each author's name and avatar.

3Templates

A template is a server layout with the private parts removed. The Templates tab has three sources: the Arclo library of 14 ready-made layouts, the Community library other servers have shared (search it, filter by category and language, and upvote what works), and Discord link, which builds from a discord.new template.

• Share publishes a backup, or a Discord template link you already made, to the Community library. Publishing keeps channels, roles and their permissions, and strips members, bans, messages, threads, emojis, stickers, member-specific overwrites and the server's images. One chokepoint, run on the server.
• Every template has a preview that draws the server it would build.
• Loading a template is the same operation as restoring a backup, because they are the same kind of document.
• A template you shared can be taken down at any time. Servers already built from it keep their layout.

4Sync

Live links that keep two places in step, up to 5 per server. Each one runs They → us, Us → them or Both ways.

Message sync

Mirrors everything posted in one channel into another, in this server or a different one, keeping each author's name and avatar. Text and announcement channels only.

Ban sync

Shares a ban list with another server: ban someone here and they are banned there too, and unbans travel the same way.

Role sync

Keeps two roles in step, in this server or another one: anyone who gets one gets the other. Both roles must sit below Arclo's own highest role.

• A loop guard remembers everything Arclo itself caused and consumes it once, so a two-way link cannot echo forever.
• Linking another server takes an administrator there as well (for a message sync, a Bot Master there also counts), and Arclo must be in both servers.
• Links are validated against Discord when you create them: the far channel is resolved, and Arclo's standing there is checked. A link that could not work is refused with a sentence saying why.

5Export & Import

Download your data as JSON or CSV from the Export & Import tab or with /export: the whole server, all channels or one, all roles or one, bans, members, emojis, stickers, invites, one channel's recent messages, one message, or one message's reactions. The command and the dashboard share their column definitions, so both produce the same file.

• Several export targets in one go produce one JSON document keyed by target. CSV stays single-target. A combined CSV would need a column set describing neither bans nor channels.
• The whole server, a single channel, a single role and a single message are JSON only: they have no honest flat form.
• Import, or /import, takes a JSON file of up to 8 MB, such as a backup you downloaded or a server export. It shows what the file holds, then loads it exactly like a backup, typed confirmation included.

Who may do what

One level for the whole system, under Who can use this system on the Settings tab, and only the server owner can change it. Whatever it is set to, Bot Masters and dashboard page grants never load anything: a backup, a template or an import is only ever loaded by the owner or an Administrator. Every command here asks for Administrator in Discord as well, and the destructive ones confirm with a button that re-checks everything when it is pressed.

Settings

Skip these channels

Left out of every backup, voice channels and whole categories included: a staff category nobody wants duplicated, an archive that would bloat the snapshot.

Skip these roles

Left out of backups, and out of the role assignments they record.

Logging

A line for every capture, restore, sync, export and import, and every scheduled backup that fails.

Commands