How to Have Your Minecraft Server Running When You're Not There

Technical Requirements

• The computer you use as the server must have a constant Internet connection with adequate signal strength. Otherwise, it could lose the connection and drop the players from the game. For this reason, broadband Internet provided by a cable or phone company is best for this purpose. You should also avoid using the computer while the server is running because other processes can slow things down and make gameplay unstable.

Plugins

• Plugins such as WorldGuard and PreciousStones prohibit other users from changing or damaging your world. The can also prevent the destructive spread of fire, lava and water. Once you download the plugin, you just need to place the JAR file into Minecraft̵7;s ̶0;Plugins̶1; folder and restart the server. Refer to the documentation that comes with the plugins to edit them to your needs.

Whitelist File

• Although plugins offer a good deal of protection, using the Whitelist.txt file in the Minecraft folder to control who has access to your server will keep out unknown and unwanted players. Double-clicking the file opens it in Notepad, where you can add or delete usernames as necessary. You must save the file and restart the server to enable the changes.

Setting Server Properties

• The final step to setting up an unsupervised server is to configure the Server.properties file in the Minecraft folder. Double-click the file to open it in Notepad and enter ̶0;True̶1; on the ̶0;white-list̶1; line to enable it. You can also enter a number between 0 and 2147483647 on the ̶0;max-players̶1; line to establish how many users can play on your server at once. Keep in mind that the more players you allow, the more computer memory and Internet bandwidth the server uses. To conserve resources, you can change the ̶0;player-idle-timeout̶1; line to set how many minutes a player can remain idle before he is booted from the server.