SpeedyCubeFor instance, [Colored Ranks] with brackets are very unoriginal and are unprofessional. Naming your server something ending in craft is very unoriginal and is unprofessional. I'd recommend searching for a build team for a spawn as well, as players are all for the pretty spawns.
No Colored Ranks? Hmm, what do you propose would replace that? By far every server (yes, every) has had Donor and Staff ranks of some sort that had "[Colored Ranks].
I don't quite get what you are saying by NOT having them? If there is an alternative, I would love to hear it.
@OriginalPost, Do not take tips from people who currently don't Manage or help manage a Minecraft server.
The MC community changes rapidly. Just last year Hunger Games was the focus of a lot of servers, and just before that it was Factions, and not to far behind we had Towny and RolePlaying. Now you have Tens of Thousands of players looking for MiniGame servers such as Mineplex and Hypixel as someone stated above. Know why those servers are as popular as they are? Youtube. Famous Youtubers played on the respected servers and their subscribers/viewers went to the servers because they were new, fresh, and had the Youtube Celebrity on the server.
To avoid immediate server death, I suggest establishing a community through advertising, recruitment, and bringing along past friends before publicly opening the server. That way when you do go public you have people who are surely going to play and will then initiate the snowball effect in which other players will join, play, and stay because others are joining, playing, and staying. Thats really all there is to it.
I can honestly say there is no other way.
From experience my First server wasn't that impressive, however I had a lot of friends from all the servers I played on, and we all respected each other and played together, and I told them about my server and brought them on to play it (no staff positions 'given' away). Keep in mind this was my first server I was getting a lot of donations from them, raising 195 in the first week (I remember exactly because I was bragging to my Dad). I was reckless and spent the money on Steam. I didnt know what advertising was. And it was continuing on for 3 months of players inviting their friends and them inviting their friends, and so on and so forth. By this point I had over $3000 raised, but spent. Fourth month came by and I did not have votifier I just had my server posted on PMC (I didnt know about the voting process) and servers were being BOTTED by someone on PMC during this time and many server had their views bumped up to the 10's of thousands. My server happened to be one and one day I woke up, and my server was on the home page of PMC with 30,000 views (when servers were allowed on the Highlight Reel). My server was flooding with players, I was repeatedly being attacked by DOS and DdOS attacks, my server was going down constantly because I didnt know what to do. I didnt know how to solve the issues I was crossing nor could I afford a server that supported hundreds of players. MY server maxed out at 120 players for nearly 2 months before I ran out of money because I was such a dumbass . I thought I was a millionaire and was just making purchases left and right on the internet. I eventually had no money, lost 99% of the players because the server was down for 2 weeks straight. (Still do not know why). And to make the story shorter than it needs to be, I took the dedicated players from that server and 5 months later opened another server, SUAMP which has been up for over a year and is still up to this day so I can say I learned from my mistakes and both times the only reason my servers went anywhere, were because of an established community. Absolutely nothing else.
