Ok so terminology wise:

• Discord Server = Matrix Space
• Discord DM = Matrix Chat (these usually exist separately from Spaces/Servers)
• Discord chat room = Matrix Room
• Discord video/voice channels = Matrix Video Room (these still have an optional text chat FYI)

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If you just want to create something resembling a discord server, you first create a Space.
You can decide if it should be public or private (public = anyone with the address can join / private = invite only)

Then you add rooms to it, normal rooms for text channels and video rooms for voice/video channels. During the creation of each of these rooms (or after) you decide if they should be visible to all space members, or be invite only (think mod channels).

Afterwards just invite people to the Space and they will be able to join the rooms you set up.

There are 3 predefined permission levels: Default, Moderator, Admin but you can also define numeric power levels for more fine grained control over what people can do. You can set permissions for users on the Space level and on the room level separately. So you can give someone mod powers for the entire Space or only for a single room.

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Some more details:

All of the different types of rooms can exist completely separate from Servers/Spaces or be part of them. The only purpose of Spaces is to create a sort of umbrella that these can all be grouped under. New people can then join the Space and automatically get access to the all the rooms that the Space/Server admin wants them to have access to. So in practice you will have a bunch of personal DMs or group chats that exist on their own, basically like any other instant messenger like Signal or WhatsApp. And then if you have a larger community that requires some more structure you can create a Space, to which you then add whatever rooms you need. There is a lot of flexibility to this however. Unlike with discord, all rooms exist completely on their own, they arent actually tied to a space. So you can detach a room from a space and attach it to another. You can also add preexisting rooms to a new Space.
So if you have a group chat with your gaming buddies, but at some point decide you want to expand your group and want to create a Space with multiple rooms, you can just add your original group chat to the newly created space.

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