Introduction
Often, when I'm bored I find myself browsing new servers on the PMC pages. Often, many of these servers aren't visually appealing at first (although a handful are rather appealing to the eye). I also often find myself setting up mini-servers in which I fiddle with the visual appeal. In this blog, I'm aiming to be able to help others with setting up an appealing display within their chat, as well as a few other things!

What You'll Need
In this tutorial, I will be using Essentials, EssentialsChat & GroupManager to start with. I'd also recommend NotePad++ if you haven't already got it, for editing config files.

Basic Chat Formatting
First things first, lets get onto your server! Type something into chat, anything works! If you haven't have a play with anything, your chat should look something like this:


Yuck! That deep red, those brackets.. how unoriginal! Makes me cringe slightly, lol.

We'll start with the essentials config!
Go to your server folder, then plugins>essentials>config.yml and open the file.
Scroll down to "Essentials (Global)"

WARNING: DO NOT COPY/PASTE ANY CODE FROM BELOW AS IT'S SPACING IS INCORRECT & WILL BREAK YOUR CONFIG!
############################################################
# +------------------------------------------------------+ #
# | Essentials (Global) | #
# +------------------------------------------------------+ #
############################################################

# A color code between 0-9 or a-f. Set to 'none' to disable.
ops-name-color: '4'

# The character(s) to prefix all nicknames, so that you know they are not true usernames.
nickname-prefix: '~'

# The maximum length allowed in nicknames. The nickname prefix is included in this.
max-nick-length: 15

There's a few things I like to change in this section, but I'll let you know what each does:
ops-name-color: The default colour of any op'd player's name in chat.
nickname-prefix: When you use the /nick command, the ~ is thrown in front of the nickname - even if it is just colour codes.
max-nick-length: Pretty self explanitory, the max length of your nickname (including colour codes).

# A color code between 0-9 or a-f. Set to 'none' to disable.
ops-name-color: 'none'

# The character(s) to prefix all nicknames, so that you know they are not true usernames.
nickname-prefix: ''

# The maximum length allowed in nicknames. The nickname prefix is included in this.
max-nick-length: 45

This is what I usually change my config too - to remove the squiggle and red text, as well as allowing multiple colour codes within a nickname.

############################################################
# +------------------------------------------------------+ #
# | EssentialsChat | #
# +------------------------------------------------------+ #
############################################################

# This section requires the EssentialsChat.jar to work.

chat:

# If EssentialsChat is installed, this will define how far a player's voice travels, in blocks. Set to 0 to make all chat global.
# Note that users with the "essentials.chat.spy" permission will hear everything, regardless of this setting.
# Users with essentials.chat.shout can override this by prefixing text with an exclamation mark (!)
# Users with essentials.chat.question can override this by prefixing text with a question mark (?)
# You can add command costs for shout/question by adding chat-shout and chat-question to the command costs section."
radius: 0

# Chat formatting can be done in two ways, you can either define a standard format for all chat.
# Or you can give a group specific chat format, to give some extra variation.
# For more information of chat formatting, check out the wiki: http://wiki.ess3.net/wiki/Chat_Formatting

format: '<{DISPLAYNAME}> {MESSAGE}'
#format: '&7[{GROUP}]&r {DISPLAYNAME}&7:&r {MESSAGE}'

group-formats:
# Default: '{WORLDNAME} {DISPLAYNAME}&7:&r {MESSAGE}'
# Admins: '{WORLDNAME} &c[{GROUP}]&r {DISPLAYNAME}&7:&c {MESSAGE}'

# If you are using group formats make sure to remove the '#' to allow the setting to be read.
Here we can remove those ridiculous brackets, as well as set chat colour, default nick colour and the whole display of the names.

format: '{DISPLAYNAME}: {MESSAGE}'
Remove the < & > and add the : after the "{DISPLAYNAME}"
We can also change the colour of default chat, for example, we could do:

format: '{DISPLAYNAME}: &f{MESSAGE}'
By adding the colour code before the message, it will make all chat white!
In the group-formats section, you can set the colour chat for a specific group!

group-formats:
Owner: '{DISPLAYNAME}: &b{MESSAGE}'
Now any chat spoken by anyone in the owner group (don't worry if you don't have groups yet, I'll talk about them more later) will have that set chat colour!

Ctrl + S to save, then use /essentials reload to reload the config.

Now, we should have something that looks a bit like this:


Still rather basic, but looks a bit more neater.

Adding a Prefix
Now, to really add the icing on the cake! The prefixes! This is where GroupManager comes into it.

Lets have a fidget with the "default group":
/mangaddv <group> prefix <prefix>Prefix MUST be written exactly like that, all lower-case otherwise it won't work!

My example:
/mangaddv default prefix &0<&8<&bWarrior&8>&0> &7


Make sure you're in the correct group to test this otherwise won't appear in chat. To change your group, type:
/manuadd [player] [groupname]
To make a group:
/mangadd [group]
Now, we experiment! I'll leave the colour codes here, for you to see and compare nice combos.


What to Avoid
There are a few things I see on servers, which really turn me off, and I'm sure many other players feel the same.

• Red Chat: I've seen many servers where Admins or Owners have red chat. It's both intimidating, overwhelming and really strains your eyes. There are other ways to make your chat stand out without having to use red font.
  
• Black Chat: Almost the same as red chat, except is really hard to read at times - especially while in caves or during the night.
  
• Bold chat: Bold chat to me seems like an attention seeker, almost a "I'm more important than others" thing. While bold is nice in your prefixes, and sometimes even nicks, please don't use it constantly in chat.
  
• &k: Everyone loves &k, it's that little chat that spazzams. While it does look nice on signs, it's really distracting to players while they are trying to something and the chat is bouncing around.
  

Well, that concludes this tutorial! I really hope this helps anyone planning to make a server or wanting to upgrade a little.
Be sure to ask any questions and show me what you've come up with, and if you found this helpful please diamond!
Depending on how this goes, I may make some more tutorials in the future, depending on what players want.

Thanks!