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So you're probably wondering how this guide can affect you and your Minecraft server. Well let me tell you this, I used to own a very successful "Factions" server which unfortunately had to be closed down due to the lack of time I had to dedicate towards PC gaming. In this guide I will be sharing all the tips and tricks I know personally that will definitely get more people playing on your server and sticking around.




Patience: Patience is the a very important thing you need when starting a successful Minecraft server. Players don't just come out of anywhere, you need to dedicate yourself and your free time to getting your server name out there. It usually takes around 1-2 months before you start seeing your server slots filling up to the brim (Depending on how many you have of course).

Communication: Coming from experience, communicating with players that are playing on your server is a great way of making them stick around and come back. I have seen a lot of server owners that come online, players are asking them questions and saying "Hi!" and the server owners ignore them. Therefore, making the players dislike them which leads to them finding a new server.

Advertising: Now you're probably wondering why I have highlighted 'Advertising' in Red. Simple, this is the most important thing when starting a successful Minecraft server. Without advertising how will people find your server? Now there are many ways to advertise but make sure you do it in the correct way otherwise you are just wasting your time! Here are some pointers to get you heading in the right direction:

- Make your text persuasive
- Don't copy the other servers advertising banners, be creative and make your own unique design
- Make sure yours stands out from the rest, grab the readers attention
- Don't wonder off topic and write too much stuff which people don't want to see

There are many different ways to advertise and I will give you some places where you can do so. A very popular way to advertise your server is posting your server IP on different servers (I do not recommend doing this as I feel it is wrong, but it is the most effective way of advertising).

- Youtube
- MineStatus
- PlanetMinecraft
- Reddit
- MinecraftForum
- Minecraft related forums

Players: Minecraft players who play on servers play on servers which keep them entertained and engaged. There are various ways of doing this but today I will be sharing the ways I kept my players entertained which meant they kept coming back.




Host Events - Believe me when I say events are very effective! Players absolutely love doing new things on servers and when doing events it keeps them very entertained. Here is a list of events that you can host yourself on your server:

- Mob Arena
- Spleef Arena
- Scavenger Hunt
- PvP Brackets (PvP Tournament)
- Mazes
- Parkour
- Building Competitions
- Drop Parties

When hosting events make sure there is a 3rd 2nd and 1st place prize. This gives players something to look forward to, therefore they play harder and become very engaged in order to win the prize.

Design & Building: Having an attractive spawn and warps definitely has an impact on whether your server will be successful or not. Very rarely will you find a successful server with lots of players that has badly designed and built spawns and warps. So when making a server, make sure you spend time building your buildings or even hire people to do it for you(If anyone needs help with building hit me up via PM and I can help you out, I am a very good builder and i'd be happy to help anyone out).




Server Website

Having a server website is very important. This enables you to interact with your players and talk to them, you can also announce updates and maintenance so that everyone knows what is happening in your community. You can also have Staff Applications on your website so that people can apply for staff roles on your server. The best place to host a Minecraft server website is:

Enjin (Search them on google)

On this website you can have a number of features, for example:

-Applications (Staff, Builder applications etc.)
-Voting Links
-Donation Pages
-Forums
-Staff/Members/Donators List
-See who is online
-Server Status
-Shoutbox
-Teamspeak Sidebar
-Announcements
-Promote/Demote members
-Have staff/donator tags assigned to certain members
-+ More!


Teamspeak

Teamspeak is a cool feature to have along side your website and server. This enables YOU and your staff to communicate with each other and also allows you to communicate with players on your server too. There are cool features to Teamspeak too, for example:

Create your own rooms e.g.

Members Room
Donators Room
Staff Chat
Owner Chat

You can also make rooms have a password, so say you are in your owner chat. No one else can join unless they know the password OR you move them.
With Teamspeak when you right click on a player online on your Teamspeak server, you have a list of options. Whether to move them to a room, ban them, promote/demote them and a lot more. This enables you to have a lot more power over your Teamspeak server than any other voice communication server out there!




Your server domain name is the most important thing about your server. If you have a very long IP, for example:

184.193.84.90:53054

People are more than likely to not remember it (although they can add it to their list, a more profession IP is needed). Now there are many different IP's that you can choose from. whether you would like your IP to start with 'mc.*****.com' or 'pvp.*****.com' and there are many others. My personal favorite is 'mc.*****.com'. This is because it starts with 'mc' which of course stands for Minecraft. These domain names cost money but they are not that much money so it is affordable to make your server look more professional. Here are some REAL server names that start with the above domain names:

mc.lolpvp.com

pvp.daegonner.com

Both of these IP's are short and sweet. This is the best thing to do when making a server IP, keep it short and sweet! As you can see LOLPVP is a very simple name, but yet so effective. This server has been rated #1 for PvP by Notch himself! The second IP listed is a Premium Factions Server. It is very popular and most people should know it if you play factions servers. This IP is unique because Daegonner is quite an unusual word but it looks good and grabs people's attention.
So remember, when making a server domain name make sure you keep it short and sweet with your own unique twist!



People usually like to play on server's that are different to everyone else's. For example, if someone was just playing on a regular factions server where you could mine and sell diamonds/gold/iron it's just a pretty plain way of gaming right? But, what if there was a server with their own custom items and weapons that you can work your way up to buy? This would be a lot more effective and unique.
From past experience, having your own Custom Server Weapons is a very good feature to have. Make sure the price of them is quite high depending on the rarity of the sword, this way, players have to work and build their money up in order to buy the best things on the server.

Another thing is having custom tags beside players names. When you go onto servers you just see the plain:

Guest
Member
Donator
Moderator
Admin
Owner

How boring is that? When people donate you should give them different donator ranks that allow them to have different kinds of tags, and to make it even more interesting, you could make the highest donator rank to be able to have their tag to say whatever they want (maybe putting a letter limit on it too, say 5-6 letters). Here are some examples of different kinds of tags to use:

Donator
VIP
VIP+
Elite
Elite+
Legend
Demi-God
God
BOSS
Titan
Mod
Admin
Head-Admin
Trial-Mod




Sales/offers are the best way to gain more donations. When your server is up and running and you have quite a traffic flow of players. I guarantee that when you have sales/offers your donation page will be swarming with players! The best time to do sales/offers is in different seasons, for example:

Christmas
Halloween
Easter
School Holidays

You can also do sales/offers to celebrate server achievements and things like that. You can have as much discount as you like, but when I used to run my server I usually done 40-50% off depending on the season. At Christmas I used to do 60-70%, but it is completely up to you!




Now you may be wondering what the title means. Well simple, when you have your server up and running smoothly, have a new 'Rank' called 'Youtuber' or 'ADV (Advertiser'. You can set limits on these ranks and also requirements, for example:

Youtube Rank must:

Have 2000 subs
Have 500+ regular views
Have commentary
Upload two video's about the server every week
Do a server series on this server

Advertiser Rank must:

Advertise at least three times a day
Make at least 1 video about the server a week
(and whatever else you would like here)

These are just examples, of course you could use some but other people may see this and use it too so you don't want to be the same as other people, but if you cannot think of anything yourself then sure, go ahead and use some examples.




Thinking of new and unique warp ideas takes a lot of time and effort, and genuinely very hard. Well, here I will suggest a few ways you can get your brain thinking and also list a few warps you could use. Now, when thinking of a new warp idea, make sure you don't copy anyone else (unless it's really cool!). Copying from 'Big/Known' servers isn't a good idea as people could come on your server and recognize whatever you have copied and tell everyone. So if you're going to copy then make sure it's not a popular server.

Thinking of new Warps is a very hard thing to do, but when I used to do it. I thought of things that made me entertained, and therefore made that warp and introduced it to my players and they enjoyed it. Places where people can 1v1 or do mini-games & parkour are cool things to do. So make sure when you're thinking of a new warp, that it isn't badly designed and also people will enjoy it.

Here are some examples of warp ideas:

1v1 Arena - A staff member can organize a 1v1 fight between two individuals and make sure there is no cheating/hacking

Oceanplots - A place where donators get a free plot when they donate, they can build/store stuff here.

Bazaar - This is a place where players can own their own shop and sell to other players on the server.

BeaverTown - This is a place where players can buy 'Already' made houses and store things. Buying these houses will not be cheap, that means when they buy one people can see they are rich. People can also PvP outside the BeaverTown safe line.




When donating to a server for a specific rank, you expect to have some cool features that you can do that normal members can't do. Same with your server. make sure you make the rank perks irresistible. Here are some examples:

Donator Rank ($10) -

Set 3 homes instead of 1 (Members can only set 1)
Can disguise as a chicken,pig (Using the Disguise Plugin)
Gets 300 mcMMO to spend on any attribute (Using mcMMO plugin)
Free $30,000 Cash
Free 20 Diamond Blocks, 20 Gold Blocks, 20 Iron Blocks

Boss Rank ($120) -

Can /Fly
Gets a free Nickname
Can set unlimited homes
Can disguise as all of the mobs and animals
Gets 1500 mcMMO to spend on any attribute
Free $150,000 cash
Free 50 Diamond Blocks, 20 Gold Blocks, 20 Iron Blocks




I had quite a difficult experience trying to choose my server host, this is because I found so many good ones! I didn't know who to choose. So when picking your server host, compare the prices and things you get for the prices, make sure you get the most for the least amount of money. Here are some Server Providers that I suggest:

BeastNode
MCProHosting
Nitrous Networks
CubedHost

The best one out of this list is Beastnode (Hands Down!)




When setting up my server I used a lot of unique and special plugins that I knew my players would enjoy. Today I will be sharing with you some of the very best plugins you can use in order to keep your server on top! I will start of with pretty basic ones then move onto the more unique ones.

Essentials
Worldedit
WorldGuard
Factions (Obviously)
TimTheEnchanter
eConomy
mcMMO
EnchantMore
AntiAD
AutoMessage
DisguiseCraft
Trade
Vault
GroupManager
AlphaChest
MyTabList
TokenCurrency
MultiVerse
PlotMe
BuyCraft
CommandBook
Backpacks
Animated Menu
Virtual Enderchest
ClearChat
Lockette
RefillChests
SimpleRegister
PvpReward
PvpBounty
ModeratorGUI
Towny
iConomy
Punishmental
RateOfXray
CombatLog
Health bar
WorldBoarder
FloAuction
Frame Protector
SilkSpawners

These plugins should get you on your way, but if you ever need to get more plugins then head over to 'Bukkit' search them on Google, they are the Worlds biggest website for Minecraft server related things.

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This is a re-post from back in the day but my topic is archived. I'm back to playing Minecraft again and have just setup my own server. It's still in the works but will be public soon! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Updates to the topic are to come!