This is my first blog post, so I hope you like what I do. I'll try to post some advice in how to lead a server. In the future I will also write about other topics.

Anyway, being a administrator is easy, but being a good one is actually very hard (I learn't the hard way..).
You have to be kind, I recommend you don't go out to the server when you are having a bad day, or you are tired.
It will just result in that someone gets banned without any actual reason. Always when you launch MC, think that this day is going to be a great day. Be positive, that's important. You have to be fair to everyone, and don't choose your favorites. The player who acts mature and positive, can also be a x-rayer or even a griefer. I recommend you won't trust someone who acts mature, get to know them. Talk to them trough Skype or TS or anything you can. That's how you make new friends and also get to know who actually plays on your server.

Trusting the wrong player can also result in a screw'd up server, there's one thing that I hate in being a server owner,
people who try to scam you. Well I'm wise and mature enough to don't fall in those "Hey I'm from PMC to make a review, can I have OP for a sec?". Do not ever give out OP to any people you really trust, my server has been DDoS:ed several times, and I have survived from it every time with fast actions and trustworthy staff. I recommend you won't ever give out OP to someone you don't really know in real life. The only players who have OP on my server are me, my IRL friend and a boy I've known for several years.

How to decide if to ban or not? Well it's always a hard question. Humans make mistakes, and we are humans. We can't always be right, but making the most reasonable decision is always hard. Let's say you've caught a griefer, or a player who x-rayed diamonds. What do you do? You ban him. Yeah that's the thing I did first too. One thing I recommend to do when you have to choose to ban or not, discuss the whole situation, what did happend? Why did he do it? It's always good to sort out the thing first before making any decisions. Try to see the situation from the player's POV, then when you know how exactly it did happend and what did happend, then you can make your decision.

How about the warnings and the length of the possible ban? Well this is pretty tricky too, you have to make the rules clear for everyone and what you expect from them. It's good to have some kind of rules at the server spawn or with a certain command like /rules or so. Many good Bukkit plugins like CommandBook or Essentials are available from the Bukkit website (www.plugins.bukkit.org). I recommend CommandBook of it's customization, but if you are new to running a server, I highly recommend Essentials because of it's ease to use. The warning system is not included in those two plugins, but there are many plugins that will do the job for you if you wan't to store the warnings and be able to rad them later with in-game commands. I recommend Nano-Warn, it's simple and easy to use plus, it's pretty lightweight too.
But in my opinion you should give three warnings and then a temp-ban, after that a ban. The temp-ban could be set to like one or two weeks. If you are able to make tempkicks (it's the same as tempban, but just another name), or even make a default time for them, like the first one could be 5min and the second 15min and the last one 1h.
Then I'd temp-ban for one or two weeks, and if he still breaks the rules. It's a ban.

Also making the server better, customizing and tweaking it will gain more players. Many regular players will tell their friends that the server is a good one, and you'll gain more players. Also a bigger server means more work, you'll possibly need staff to do that. I.M.O. a good staff rank could have basic moderating permission, but then be able to kick, mute and temp-ban (I would limit the max temp-ban time to like 24h), and then when you've made the rank you could set up a apply system, either in your server forums (if you have one), or that they would write a book in-game and describe why they are the suitable person for the job. Also, don't trust everyone. Check if they have been banned before, and why. It's good to know who you actually have in your staff. I wouldn't accept staff to my server if they didn't have Skype or TeamSpeak (or any related program) to talk with. It's good to communicate with people before accepting them. Just so you know who work for your server, and give your staff easy but lightweight rules. Also tell them that they must report every ban they do, and why they banned the player. This is most easy if you have some kind of website or forum they could submit the ban report. If someone get's staff and he just abuses the commands, you don't need to explain why you demoted them from their rank. If your server does have a pretty small playerbase, do not accept so much staff, otherwise you'll only have staff online, and no-one playing.

Yes, a website! In order to run a successful server and be able to communicate with others outside of the server, you'll need a some kind of website with forums or anything that makes communicating easy. You easily make one with the "drag and drop" website builders, but if you know even a little about HTML or web-based coding, I recommend you to build he website by yourself, it will look more professional (in the case you know what do), and you'll have a more personalized site. But if you are new to all this stuff, just navigate to www.weebly.com or www.webs.com.
To look more professional, I recommend you buy a domain. It will make connecting to your server more easy, and the IP-address will be easier to remember. In my case I have a domain; www.pat.fi and I use the address ftb.pat.fi to join the server. It's much more easier to remember than 46.253.194.84:25565. Admit it. Domains are pretty cheap, you can get one from www.godaddy.com, they have pretty cheap domains and a good customer service.

Oops, it looks like this looks more like a "How to make a successful server", but I don't actually care.
I will be writing a part two for this, but as I'm waiting for a train, so I better stop now. Thanks for reading and if you have any questions, please write them in the comments or PM me! - Joel