Growing your server

A stranger meets three things before they meet your community: the icon, the banner and the first line of the description. They are also what every share, preview and listing is built from, so they are worth more attention than the channel list.

The icon and banner are not optional extras. A server without both cannot be listed on Explore at all, and its shared links fall back to a generic Kaisuki card rather than showing anything of yours.

The description carries up to 1,000 characters, but the part that travels is the opening sentence — it is what a link preview quotes. Write that line for somebody who has never heard of the place.

Explore is a request, not a switch. Your server must be active, it must have both an icon and a banner, and you ask to be listed — a person reviews it. A rejection comes back with a written reason, and you can fix it and resubmit; it updates the same request rather than joining the back of a queue.

Ranking is member count. There is no trending signal, no recency boost and no reward for activity — a quiet server of 500 outranks a busy one of 200. Servers holding Spark Pro get a small nudge, capped at the equivalent of 20 members, which breaks ties rather than winning them.

You can unlist yourself at any time without asking anyone.

The verified mark says one thing: Kaisuki recognises this server as a real, established community with someone accountable behind it. It is not a quality rating, it is not a ranking, and it does not change where you appear in Explore or what you earn.

It cannot be bought. Kikko, Spark Pro and boosts have no bearing on it — the first time a trust mark can be paid for it stops meaning anything, so there is deliberately nothing in the process that money touches.

Six things have to be true before you can apply: the server is active, it is already listed on Explore, it is at least 14 days old, it has at least 50 members, the owner's email is confirmed, and the owner's account is in good standing. Your settings page shows all six with a tick or a cross against each, so you never have to guess which one is holding you up.

Meeting all six does not grant it. They are the floor that gets your application in front of a person — every one of them could be faked by somebody determined enough, which is exactly why the decision is made by a human looking at your server rather than by a number.

A decline comes back with a written reason and a 30-day wait before you can apply again. That wait is longer than the Explore one on purpose: most declines are "not yet" rather than "fix your banner", and there is nothing to gain from asking again the next morning.

The mark can be removed as easily as it was given — if the server changes hands or stops being what it was verified as, it goes.

An invite link is the main way people arrive, and what it looks like when pasted somewhere decides whether anyone clicks. A Kaisuki invite unfurls with your server name, your description or invite message, and your live member count — with your banner as the image.

Past 600 members that image becomes a generated card carrying your icon, banner and current member count together. Below it, your banner is the picture — another reason to have one.

Invite links can expire and can be capped to a number of uses, or be permanent and unlimited. Both are set when you create the link, and the invite list shows clicks alongside uses so you can see which share actually worked.

A private server behaves differently on purpose: its links carry no preview card at all and are not indexed. If you want a link that looks like something, the server has to be public.

A vanity URL turns an eight-character invite code into your own name. It is the link that survives being read aloud, printed, or typed from memory — and it does not expire.

It unlocks at Awakening Level 3, which is 14 Awakenings. Three to thirty-two characters, letters, numbers and hyphens, first come first served.

The vanity page counts its own visits separately, so you can tell traffic from your named link apart from traffic from invite codes.

Most people who leave a server leave almost immediately, and usually because they arrived somewhere that did not obviously want them. Four things exist to fix that and all of them are off by default.

A welcome message posts to a channel you choose and can name the person and their member number. A default role can be given automatically on arrival, which is what makes channels visible if yours are gated. A rules gate holds people read-only until they accept. Onboarding questions let somebody pick their own interests and receive roles for them.

Set them up and then arrive through your own invite link to see what a stranger sees.

Reaction roles, polls, threads, a forum, your own emoji and stickers, and a shared YouTube watch party in a channel are all yours to run.

Server preview is worth knowing about: it lets a signed-in stranger read your public channels before joining. A place that looks alive from outside converts far better than a locked door.

House Wars and daily objectives are platform-wide rather than per-server — you cannot run one for your community, though members Awakening your server do move points for their house.

Insights, under Settings, shows messages, joins, leaves and active members over 7, 14 or 28 days. Watch leaves against joins rather than joins alone; growth that arrives and leaves is not growth.

A member Awakening your server spends 1,200 Kikkō, and 900 of it — 75% — is credited to the server the moment it happens.

Kikkō that Kaisuki gave away rather than the member earning it is the exception: it Awakens the server exactly the same way and keeps every perk, but it does not count toward earnings. Nobody paid for those Kikkō, so there is nothing to pass on. Your booster list marks which is which.

Nothing on Kaisuki is bought with money, so every Kikkō your members spend on you is one they earned by turning up. That is the honest reason this section sits last: people Awaken places they already care about.