Basic Setup Guide

Ready to get started? Let's go!

Hosting Options

There is no such thing as absolutely free hosting!

Either your information is the payment, or your feature set is extremely limited! Be careful for scams, obscure hosting plans, or sneaky payment systems and plans!

Self Hosting

If you're looking to host a tiny instance, or something that's not critical to keep online all the time, you're more than welcome to run it on your local machine!

VPS/KVM/VDS Systems

There's many services that host systems that you could use for this! Hostinger, DigitalOcean, Contabo, etc.! These are much more in depth due to you needing knowledge of how to manage the system.

Pterodactyl Panel

The most "plug and play" out of them all! This is the most popular option since this panel lets you do anything from Console Management, File Management, and more! Something like SparkedHost comes to mind!

Configuration

This configuration happens in the common.json file stored at the root of the bot directory.

You need to enable Developer Mode if you haven't already for this process!

To enable it, go to: Discord Settings > Advanced > Developer Mode

1. Get your License!

All customers need to have a license! This is to allow your bot to communicate with our API and support neat features like global bans, Lavalink services, and some other things! Plus, it helps us protect our product.

If you need a license, open a ticket in our Support Server!

2. FOR PTERODACTYL ONLY: Change your .json file format!

Pterodactyl does not support colored .json5 files within your editor. Due to this make sure to set json5 to false if your host is running pterodactyl.

Pterdactyl Panel The screenshot below shows what a typical Pterodactyl file editor looks like. If your panel looks slightly different, don't worry, many hosting providers use custom themes or branding, so the appearance may vary.

3. Set your Bot Token!

For this, you'll have to look in the Discord Developer Portal!

For new bots, first create a new application, then navigate to Bot and click Reset Token to generate your bot token. While you are at the dev portal, don't forget to invite the bot to your server if you haven't already, preferably with Administrator permissions. Finally, enable the required privileged intents under Bot > Privileged Gateway Intents (Presence, Server Members, and Message Content).

For those with an older version of Athena, you can just copy over your current token into the new configuration file.

If you need help finding how to make one, I'll link that video here!

4. Set your MongoDB URI!

This is what lets your bot save data! The process for that is shown in this video!

5. Set your Discord Bot ID!

Without this, your bot doesn't know which account to interface with.

You need to have Discord's Developer Mode enabled if you haven't yet! It's pretty simple to get it, just right click your bot user in your server and 'Copy ID'.

6. Set your Discord Server (Guild) ID!

You need to have Discord's Developer Mode enabled if you haven't yet! This is the Server/Guild your bot is in! (Right-click your server icon to get it)

7. Set your server name!

This is for your bot's reference in regards to your server name in it's messages.

8. Set your server color!

This just makes your embeds correlate to the color you wanted to see the most, so choose whatever you want here.

9. Set your language!

This is the language the bot responds in on Discord.

• English: en

• German: de

• Spanish: es

• French: fr

• Portugese: pt

• Dutch: nl

• Turkish: tr

• Russian: ru

• Polish: pl

10. Set your timezone!

This is the timezone the bot will use for time-based operations and logging. Use standard timezone identifiers (e.g., "Europe/Berlin", "America/New_York").

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After everything is done, it should look something similar to below!

{
    "general": {
        "license": "XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX",
        "json5": false,
        "lang": "en",
        "timezone": "Europe/Berlin"
    },
    "bot": {
        "mongodb_uri": "URI KEY HERE",
        "discord_bot_token": "BOT TOKEN HERE",
        "discord_bot_id": "BOT ID HERE",
        "discord_guild_id": "SERVER ID HERE",
        "server_name": "SERVER NAME HERE",
        "server_color": "YOUR FAVORITE COLOR IN HEX HERE"
    },
    "dashboard": {
        "enabled": false,
        "port": 3222,
        "discord_client_oauth_secret": "",
        "dashboard_base_url": "",
        "web_api_base_url": "",
        "whitelisted_user_ids": [],
        "disable_dashboard_configuration": true,
        "sync_dashboard_configs_to_file": false,
        "low_ram_mode": false
    },
    "console": {
        "logs_include_date": true,
        "logs_to_file": true,
        "logs_include_dashboard_output": true,
        "maximum_log_file_count": 20
    },
    "util": {
        "register_commands": true,
        "prevent_duplicated_message": false,
        "backup_configs_on_startup": false,
        "maximum_config_backup_count": 10,
        "auto_restart": true,
        "auto_restart_every": "7d",
        "debug": false,
        "developer_mode": false
    },
    "updater": {
        "auto_update": true,
        "create_system_backup_before_update": true,
        "maximum_backup_count": 10,
        "plugin_bypass": [],
        "delay_restart_in_seconds": 60,
        "dev_builds": false
    }
}

Congrats! You're all set on this part!

But we're not done yet!

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Installing Dependencies

Pterodactyl Setup

If you're hosting your own Pterodactyl panel, you can use the official AthenaBot egg. Any standard Node.js egg that supports Node.js v22+ is also compatible. In addition, the AthenaBot download includes a pterodactyl-eggs folder containing two ready to use egg files.

ATTENTION: Based on user reports, gsrvtech's egg may not be compatible with all pterodactyl setups. If you experience any issues, we recommend using the standard Node.js eggs included with the AthenaBot download instead.

Make sure to select Node v22 (LTS) or above in your panel!

Self-Host/Non-Pterodactyl Setup

AthenaBot is developed in JavaScript and requires Node v22 / v24 LTS to run. You can download it from the official Node.js website.

Linux (Ubuntu/Debian) Manual Installation

• Open a terminal in your Athena bot folder.

• Run sudo apt-get update

• Run sudo apt-get install -y build-essential libcairo2-dev libpango1.0-dev libjpeg-dev libgif-dev librsvg2-dev to install Canvas/native build requirements.

• Run npm install to install Node packages.

• Start the bot using node index.js

Windows Manual Installation

• Open CMD or PowerShell in your Athena bot folder.

• Run npm install to install Node packages.

• If Canvas fails to install, install Visual Studio Build Tools (Desktop development with C++) and Python 3, then run npm install again.

• Start the bot using node index.js

For Bot Persistence even after closing the CMD Prompt window:

Linux:

Install PM2 once with npm install pm2 -g, then use pm2 start index.js --name Athena to keep your bot alive.

And use pm2 stop Athena to turn it back off! Windows:

PM2 is primarily documented here for Linux hosts. For Windows, use the startup batch script windows start.bat provided in the download (or Windows Task Scheduler) for persistence.

This script allows you to keep AthenaBot online even after restarts. The batch script was made by @.dodgeman (334154279029833728)

Finalizing Setup

If you edit Athena files locally in Visual Studio Code, install the JSON5 Syntax extension so your .json5 config files are color highlighted and easier to read.

• Start the Bot! This will create all necessary configuration files for you to edit!

• Configure everything! All configuration files can be found in your ./configuration folder!

• Restart the Bot!

• Enjoy!

Configuration Files After completing this guide, your configuration files will be generated in the /configuration folder. These are the files you should edit. The files inside the /plugins folder are templates and should not be modified.

If you'd also like to set up the dashboard, follow the Dashboard Setup Guide.