I've been playing Minecraft for a while now, and began on a simple Vanilla Server which I played on all the time. Then I moved to a Bukkit Server but got banned quite quickly by accident. That was all sorted. Ever since then I had been finding new servers to play on, but just couldn't find one that I really wanted. I then got my Debit Card through the post, and a few months later saw myself ordering a Minecraft Server from PlugPayPlay.com

It started off with a basic IP, many plugins and not much server knowledge. It only had half a GB of RAM as that's all I could afford and about 3 or 4 players; including Me and the other "Founder". Time went on and it progressively got better and better with our community growing. The other Founder, VipezzAnatomy decided it would be fun to install useless plugins which caused lag for the server and annoyed others.

I fell out with him a few times, and always fell into the trap of leaving him that little bit of access I forgot he had. I would de-op him, de-rank him but by this time he was one step ahead and had already changed some password for McMyAdmin / Game Panel. We then went back to normal again, and the second time we fell out he griefed the entire server. I managed to de rank him and change all the passwords. This time I forgot to de-op him and take him out of creative mode. Meaning it didn't take him long to find the Lava Bucket and "get to work" as it were.

The server had many ups and downs. Then when he went away for a weekend, I seized the chance and he was gone. I changed all the passwords first, then de-ranked him, de-opped him and banned him. There was no way he was coming back on. Luckily, I never gave into him and didn't let him back on. We're no longer friends and he's running a very unsuccessful server. I then changed the IP to mc.mingul.co.uk:25583 which meant the server went down for a little while. This was no issue, but this was when the server really became Mingul. The swap was easy this time round, as the old IP worked too meaning you could connect from any of them.

I then received a job I applied for at the Hosting Company and managed to get a free Dedicated IP address. Meaning we could get rid of that :25583 (Port) on the end! This time round it did cause a few issues, as I forgot to tell everyone and by that time it was all too late. We lost quite a few players to begin with, but they either worked out to take the 25583 off the end or looked at the website: mingul.co.uk. After this we were aiming to get the server more well known and get more donations in order to upgrade.

The donations didn't come through for a while, but once one person donated a lot of people were inclined to donate. This meant we finally upgraded from however much RAM we had to another half of RAM. In the end we had 3GB of RAM and still do today, which manages to hold up to 60 people quite comfortably.

I almost joined up with another server, as they've got a dedicated server with lots of RAM and it's very fast. However, we never went any further with that. Although the owner of that server did advertise mine on his, causing a lot of problems as he blamed me for advertising. This meant a lot of the players from his server, were begging to play on mine too - Great News! I also gained a few mods and even admins from his server that began to play on mine. And that's how I've got the great team of Mods and Admins I do today. I am still looking for new players, and currently have 3 in Trial Mods. Although, I dislike it when people come on and ask for OP or Admin. They need to wait, prove themselves. I'm less likely to with that attitude.

With that in mind, I began ranking them up pretty quickly. Then realized this was a mistake. As come the end of November and start of December this is when the fall-outs and griefing began. We had so many rollbacks, griefers and issues. I almost shut the server down for good. There were a few clans coming on using hacks to hack the server, which is stupid and horrible to me and fellow minecrafters. It doesn't bring joy for anyone. Eventually though, we re built the map and sorted it all out - so we thought. A new hacking clan arrived causing us more issues, however they have now all been banned and have stopped. Then we were DDoSed, again this has now stopped. The server has been through a lot. But after all that, it still survives to date!

It's been going over 2 months now, and it will have been going 3 months on 15th January 2012. We hope to switch to a Dedicated Server soon and jump straight in with a lot more RAM than we already have. Obviously this will cost about £100 per month meaning we will need a secure amount of donations per month before we do that. Also we will need to look into the best deal possible for the Dedicated Server. That's how the Mingul Server started and our future plans. Mingul has so much more to give.

Visit our Minecraft Server at: mc.mingul.co.uk We hope to see you playing on there soon! Also, Thanks for reading this. Let's just hope Mingul continue and get to where we want in a few years!