To convice:

So recently, I've been wanting to create a server. Today, I talked to my dad about it. He knows very little of Minecraft, and was thus confused. He instructed me to write down my request, in concise terms.

So I did that, and I figured I may as well share it with the community here. :P In case your wondering, Father did approve my request.

The Purpose of a Server


[name], 1/25/13
















While there are many, free-to-play Minecraft servers, building one of your own provides an excellent experience. You can create great structures with a select amount of people, on your terms, with your own rules.




Although default servers (known as 'vanilla servers') can become quite customized, they eventually reach a 'limit'. (Quotes, because every world is infinite, and thus can't truly be filled with buildings, farms, and castles.)




This is where special addons, called 'plugins', come in! With a special 'mod' (modification) called 'Bukkit', one can do anything to a server.


Would you like to create set 'factions' that can declare war against each other? Would you like to make an arena where players can fight in teams, without the danger of hitting a 'friendly'? What about a game of capture the flag? Or maybe you prefer powerful tools that let you create snowy mountains with a few clicks? All of these are but basic plugin functions.




But where do these plugins come from? How would one set them? Are they nothing more than an executable file with a simple 'wizard' installer? No. For the most basic plugins, you must download them, hunt for and open a few hidden folders (found under the 'roaming' heading), and drag them in.




As I've already told, I'd be renting a server, if you'd permit me. Of course, they cost money. One might find the problem of acquiring such money a decant one. However, many servers are powered by the players themselves, who donate in order to earn things like special ranks, and access to special plugins. Such plugins give powerful abilities. Some let aforementioned donors fly, teleport, and create items (such as weapons) from thin air. In fact, these rewards themselves are powered by plugins, called 'group managers'.




Group managers can surely be called a complicated sort of beast. They're linked to every other plugin you have installed. Often, they're casually referred to as 'perms', meaning 'permissions', because their purpose is to permit player/donor/staff actions. Do you want your moderators to fly, but you don't want everyone else to? Create a special moderator permission group! Remember the 'factions' I talked about in my third paragraphs? You can create a group for each, and prevent enemy 'spies' from entering your base.




But what're the educational benefits to such plugins? Easy. As you know, I'd like to work as an information technology .. person. Such requires an understanding of coding. Group managing plugins contain a basic amount of information, but you're obligated to tear them apart and configure them. That's done with a format called 'YAML'. In simple terms, it's a go-between one uses to communicate with the group management plugin. I type in a large amount of (still very specific) quasi-code, which the server takes and translates to fully-fledged code. Thus, one learns to troubleshoot the problems they'll likely run into. Thus, one learns to express themselves in a detailed, concise way-- an extremely valuable skill needed for every programming language.