Unlike other chat and messaging apps, Telegram was developed to support bots with little effort. Bot support has resulted in a staggering number of bot options that you can find and integrate into your groups. In addition, creating your own bot is quite simple since most of the necessary tools are already in Telegram.
This guide will explain the process of creating and adding a basic bot to your Telegram channel. For simplicity, the guide will focus on the PC version, but similar steps apply to other platforms.
How to create a Telegram bot
Making a simple Telegram bot shell is quite simple. This is what you will have to do.
- Open the Telegram app and sign in if necessary.
- Click on the search bar in the upper left corner and search for “BotFather.”
- In the “Global Search” tab, you will see a verified account marked with the handle “@BotFather.” This is the official Telegram bot builder. Click on it to start chatting.
- Click the big “START” button in the chat.
- Type or select the command “/newbot” from the list and submit it to start the creation process.
- Now choose a name for your bot and submit it. Note that the bot name does not have to end with or contain “Bot,” but it can help other users know that they are using a bot in the future.
- After naming it, create a unique username for your bot. According to the instructions, the username should have “bot” at the end.
- Save the API token link that BotFather sends in a response. Please do not share it with others as it provides full moderation access and control.
- Add a description to your bot by typing “/setdescription” and following with the descriptor text. Other users will see this text when the bot greets them or opens their details. It can be used similarly to a greeting message or direct users to basic bot commands.
- To populate your bot profile with an image, type “/setuserpic” and when BotFather responds, send the image to be added to your bot account.
And this is how you create a basic Telegram bot profile. You should be able to see your bot if you type its username into the search bar, and when you click on it, it should open a chat with the message you set as a description earlier.
Keep in mind that a newly created bot is essentially a blank slate and must be programmed before it can do anything remotely useful. You can consult Telegram bot manual linked in the first BotFather post to learn how to add commands or sign up for a service that does it for you.
Bots must have three basic commands: start, help and configuration. These global commands are available through an interface and help users navigate through other functions of the bot.
Unfortunately, this is where the easy part (and the scope of this guide) ends. Creating a functional bot requires programming knowledge, usually in Java, C# or Python.
The token you saved can be used for third-party services to connect the bot’s API to theirs, allowing you to program or add features through their platform. To have complete freedom over how your bot operates, you’ll need to know more about libraries, coding, object-oriented programming, and knowledge of IDEs (such as Visual Studio Code).
There are services built for bots aimed at business promotion, currency exchange, product ordering, news gathering, and much more.
Don’t worry
What attracts people to Telegram can vary greatly. Some join for privacy and encryption, others because there is no limit on the number of channel members, while others for its open source code and the ease of deploying bots. And with all the possibilities that Telegram offers, it is clear why it has such high user engagement.
This article only covered the basics of creating a bot, and the rest will depend on your programming or third-party implementation experience. Let us know in the comments if you had any problems with Telegram bots or what guides you would like to learn more about below.