Discord 101: Joining the Community
Joining the Community
You can join and engage with the Covalence community in our private Discord server. You may already be familiar with Discord, but if you aren't, Discord is a real-time chat application with text, voice, and video capabilities. It's very similar to Slack or IRC, but Discord is specifically designed and developed with gamers in mind. It turns out that those features for gamers work really well for us as educators and developers, too!
Once you log in to Gravity, you will have the option to "Connect Discord" (the button located at the top of the page). This will open up a new tab where you can create an account (or log in with the one you already have created) and then join our Discord server.
Once you join, you can find more information about the specific channels, how you can receive help, and more in the #discord-guide channel.
Please note: you should not have to create multiple user accounts. We connect your Gravity account with your Discord handle when you join our server, so your "Connect Discord" button should read "Join Discord" after you connect the first time. Once you create an account with Discord once, you can log in with that same account everytime. If you clear your cache/cookies from your browser, you may instead see "Connect Discord" again in Gravity. If this happens, don't create a new account; instead, just log in with your original Discord account.
Simplify Discord by Installing the App
It's a lot easier to use Discord when you use their app(s), whether you're on a desktop/laptop or mobile device. They support virtually every platform and operating system, so there's no excuse! Download the Discord app today, log in once, and make your life a lot easier when interacting with the Covalence community. Download Discord
How to Format Your Discord Messages - Discord conveniently supports Markdown (the same kind of mark-up you use in README files!), and here's a help article detailing the markdown syntax that Discord supports. Markdown 101 for Discord
Code snippets - When you need to share a snippet of your code, instead of taking a screenshot that is very hard to troubleshoot, copy and paste your code and wrap that snippet in 3 of these: ` ` ` (i.e., a backtick – the key typically found to the left of the number 1 on keyboard): html <p>This is an example of an HTML paragraph element shared in a code snippet on Discord!</p>
Syntax highlighting - After the first three backticks, specify the language you're using for the snippet you're sharing. For example, html, css, or js.
Tagging another user - If you want to notify a specific person of your message, you can tag them with the @ symbol: Hey @jackson - thanks for this handy dandy guide!