All featuresServer Lockdown

Server Lockdown

Shut the door mid-raid. Pause invites, raise verification and slow every channel at once — with a timer that lifts it all for you.

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Overview

Every other protection here judges something that has already happened: a message that was sent, a channel that was deleted, an account that already joined. A lockdown is the one control that acts before any of that — it stops new people arriving at all. That matters because the expensive part of a raid is not the first ten accounts, it is the two hundred behind them, and the window in which a moderator is awake and deciding what to do is exactly when the door should already be shut.

How it works

One command pulls every lever Discord gives a bot

Invites are paused, the verification level is raised so new and unverified accounts cannot talk, and — if you ask for it — a slowmode goes across every channel that can take one. That is the complete set: Discord offers a bot nothing else that closes a server.

Everything is written down before it is changed

What the server looked like first — whether invites were already paused, the verification level somebody had tuned, each channel's own slowmode — is recorded before a single setting moves. Lifting restores from that record rather than from defaults, which is the difference between undoing a lockdown and quietly erasing months of configuration.

It lifts itself

Give it a number of minutes and the lockdown ends on its own. A server locked at three in the morning by the one moderator who was awake otherwise stays locked until they wake up, and a locked server is one nobody can join — including the people you actually want.

Slowmode never loosens anything

A channel that already had a stricter slowmode is left exactly as it was and is not recorded, so lifting the lockdown cannot relax a setting the lockdown never made. This is the failure that turns an emergency tool into a liability, and it is ruled out rather than watched for.

Key capabilities

Pause invites so nobody new can join, in one command

Raise the verification level to keep new accounts from talking

Apply a slowmode across every channel at once, or on its own without locking

An automatic timer, so a lockdown started at 3am does not last until noon

Full restore from a record of what the server looked like before

Invites that were already paused stay paused when the lockdown lifts

Status at a glance: who locked it, why, and when it lifts

Every lock and lift written to the log with the person behind it

Setup

1.Nothing to configure — the command is there as soon as Sylon is. Make sure Sylon has Manage Server, which is what pausing invites costs.

2.During a raid: `/lockdown on minutes:30` shuts the door and lifts it half an hour later.

3.Add `seconds:10` to put a slowmode across every channel at the same time.

4.`/lockdown off` lifts it early; `/lockdown status` says whether it is on and when it ends.

How it works in detail

Why a door beats a better filter

Sylon has a lot of filters, and during an ordinary day they are the right tool: they judge one message or one account at a time and they are almost always right. A raid breaks that trade. Two hundred accounts arriving in ninety seconds means two hundred judgements, each of which can be wrong, against an attacker who only needs a handful to get through. Closing the door is a single decision, made once, that cannot be wrong in the same way — and it costs the server nothing but half an hour of not accepting new members.

The restore is the feature

Locking a server is easy; putting it back exactly as it was is not, because everything a lockdown touches had a prior value that only existed in Discord's copy. Restoring to "the defaults" would set the verification level to the loosest one Discord has and flatten every per-channel slowmode a moderator ever set, and nobody would notice for weeks. So the before is written down first, the record is what lifting reads, and a channel the lockdown never touched is one the lift cannot touch either.

Commands

/lockdown <action> [minutes] [seconds] [reason]Lock the server during a raid, or lift the lock.

Good to know

Sylon needs Manage Server to pause invites and change the verification level, and Manage Channels for the slowmode.

A lockdown that is already on refuses to be started again — re-locking would overwrite the record of what to restore.

Categories and announcement channels take no slowmode, so they are skipped rather than reported as failures.

Discord's own slowmode ceiling is six hours; anything higher is clamped to it.

Frequently asked questions

What happens to the members already in the server?

Nothing is taken from them. A lockdown is about arrivals, not about the people already inside — nobody is kicked, nobody loses a role. The verification level can stop very new accounts from talking, which is the point, but everybody established carries on as normal.

Can I use just the slowmode?

Yes. `/lockdown slowmode 10` puts a ten-second slowmode across every channel without touching invites or verification, which is what you want when a channel is being flooded but the server is not under attack.

What if I forget to lift it?

Give it a number of minutes when you start it and you cannot forget — it lifts itself. If you started one with no timer, `/lockdown status` will tell you it is still on and who started it.

Does it undo settings I had configured?

No, and this is the part that took the most care. Lifting restores from what was recorded at the moment of locking, not from Discord's defaults — so a verification level you had tuned, and every per-channel slowmode a moderator set months ago, come back exactly as they were.

Related features

Server Guard (Anti-Nuke & Recovery)

Join Gate

Moderation Suite