So, you want to make a server? Well, then, I really hope you have thought this through and are at least ready to face some of the many challenges that you will come up against.

I am here to give some advice in the form of a story. And this story is about a server that failed for a long time, then got on its feet and stood tall after going through many trials and errors.


To start off, I was never really a techie sort of guy. I knew next to nothing about how computers worked and had no idea how a server ran. Then one day I joined this incredible survival server. It had been running for a year already and had an amazing community and awesome, dedicated staff. I played on this server for a full five months, until things began to wear off, and the server lost popularity and started to go down. Donations stopped, only about five people were on a day, and all my friends had either moved on or gone to other servers. So I went inactive and tried to find another server of its kind. I didn't find any that matched it. Then one day I had this awesome idea! Why not create a server of my own? Yeah, that would be soooo awesome! I could be like ZexyZek! (e.e)

I followed this idea, and the first thing I ran into was… a wall of complete and utter nothing. Literally. I knew nothing about how a server was run or how it worked! So, I dedicated the next few weeks purely to research and testing (Always research something before diving in.) I found out how to get a host, learned how to read errors, figured out how to write configs, and, at the end, I had a little test server on LAN. I played on my LAN server for about a week, downloading a ton of useless plugins I knew nothing about and having a blast. 

After I thought I had what I wanted in a server, I decided to go professional and get a host. I found a great, cheap host for exactly what I wanted and purchased a server. The next thing I ran into was FTP. I had never heard of FTP. Heck, I didn't even know what it stood for! After a lot of research, I finally figured it out and started uploading my server's files off my Mac (Yeah, Mac.. Lol me). Then for the first time, I started up my awesome server.

Just so you know, the server was a Factions/Raiding/Griefing/Nooblet Server.

The first day...was a nightmare. All that whole day my server was crashing due to plugin incompatibilities. I had too many plugins that couldn't work together, and I had to delete half of them (I had 60 plugins to start, most of which were minigames). I got the server down to a bare minimum--just plain old factions and spleef. I started to advertise on PMC, bumping my server religiously every day and actually getting a few players. The first few players got a tag on their name in the order of joining (1st, 2nd, 3rd), and the first player who joined was one of my best friends from the old server (The second one was a flyhacker whom we banned).

After a week of the server being up, we got our first donation! Boy, was I excited for that $10! I used it to place an ad on a website that was cheap and easy to get a spot on. Lol what a waste of money that was… But it gave me an idea. I put my server up on as many server lists as possible, and (after much pain and suffering) got votifier all setup. My players could now vote and get rewards!

It was an awesome time for me, going through everyday server life, dealing with hackers and rule breakers, raiding nooby factions, and generally trolling the heck out of my players. My server now had five staff members who were on regularly.

Then it happened. One day whilst on the server, I was joking around with a bunch of guys, and (yes, I am being serious) called one of them a monkey face. Now, judge me all you like, but I wasn't a very serious owner back then. I loved trolling players and seeing them rage. But this time, it seemed that I had made the wrong guy rage. Next thing I knew, the server was DDoSed, spawn was nuked, two guys were force-opped, and my server was ruined. This would not have happened had I used world guard instead of factions to protect spawn (just a tip for you guys!). This was a huge downer for me. I felt awful. I just wanted to stop the server right there and then. But, no, I had to fix it. So, I whitelisted the server and began work with what staff I had left. We had a new spawn, new protections, and a whole new world for factions.

This was a critical time for me as an owner. I was getting the hang of things, but slowly losing players at the same time. So, I stopped trolling people, got rid of my faction, and decided just to sit back and let the players play. Donations at this point were extremely rare and usually only just enough to keep the server on its feet (I even had to dig in my bank to fund it). Then one day I found this awesome plugin! You were able to create these cool Player NPCs that you could battle! So, I created a Herobrine NPC, gave him a sword, and made him spawn in the "Herobrine Woods." This was a major leap of faith, but it did keep a lot more players busy! My server had now been running for around five months.

When 1.6 came out for Bukkit, my server updated. And crashed. The whole system died, most people lost bases, and I had to remove factions. It was now a survival server with raiding and griefing, but no factions. Surprisingly, only about ten people cared about factions being gone. The rest were pretty happy to see it go (not that there were that many to be happy--lol). I started getting more unique plugins to enhance the survival gameplay, I started to see the importance in a community. All in all, 1.6 was a time of change. Huge change. We lost a lot of the old players and got a lot of new ones. We had a few donations and were able to upgrade the server. It was now becoming a decent server. The server had now been running for 6 1/2 months.

The next few months were normal: Bug fixes, the occasional hacker, working on new plugins, getting more players, and so on. Then 1.7 came out, but Bukkit had not updated for it.. So we waited around for a new development build to come out, and, eventually, it did. I updated the server, and--boom--crashes 4 Lyfe Dawg. I had to do something. I could not run a server this laggy and this unstable. Also, funds were drying up again, and I couldn't keep everything going. So, in late November, I decided to change hosts and start afresh.

I found a nice, cheap host, said goodbye to our old host, and moved over all the files with FTP. Some of the old players tagged along as well. For the whole month of December 2013, I was working like a dog. I lost sleep, I had migraines, and my server was awesome. I had decided that the whole factions deal is really just a stink pile of bad community (unless you like the whole rage-when-griefed thing). So my new server was Anti-Grief, player-friendly, and was dedicated to bringing you the best survival experience possible. I brought along Herobrine and gave him his own world and inventory and made a new 1.7 Survival world. I started advertising with our newfangled SRV IP. And the server began to perk up.

January 2014 rolled in, and we had a big New Year's party. Lots of people had donated for Christmas, and I was able to do some hardcore advertising! We were finally getting a steady flow of new players on the server! People were more active, and the donations were pouring in. I was able to finally support the server I had worked on for ten whole months.

We now have at least ten people on all day and 20/30 people on after school. Some players have played the server a whole WEEK in real time. That just blows my mind. But it does make me feel a whole lot better for all those nights of sleep I lost  back in 1.6…. Don't get me wrong; bugs and crashes happen, but that is just how a server goes, and you just have to keep moving.

I have youtubers and live-streamers playing and recording the server. I have dedicated staff whom I can trust. I have an awesome community full of creative players. What more could any server owner want?


In closing, I am going to list a few things a server needs to keep going:

#1 Community. You cannot do anything without a dedicated player base.
#2 Donations. You cannot do anything without money to run it!
#3 A Host. Unless you have a Boss Computer and internet, always use a Host.
#4 Staff. You NEED Staff. An Owner CANNOT do everything all by him/herself.

Hope you enjoyed reading this, and maybe it gave you some pointers(:D?).

P.S. If you did read it all, how am I even standing before you, oh, great and powerful one? o.O