Okay i will teach you the easiest and most effective way of making a great working minecraft online server.

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Part 1: Portforwarding(only if your hosting it on your computer)

Portforwarding is often a complicated process for people but really when it comes down to it, is very simple. I will be covering how to do it on a Linksys router, but most routers are very similar in how you do this. If you need help with portforwarding feel free to PM me and ask for help.

Step 1: In order to portforward you need to find your IPv4 Default Gateway, this is normally going to be 192.168.1.1. To make sure what this is open on the command terminal and type ipconfig as the command, this will show you your IP information, as well as your IPv4 Default Gateway. Once you have found this, type it into your web browser.

Once typed into your web browser you will be prompted to enter a username and password, if you are on linksys and have not changed this info, the username will be Admin and the password will be admin. Passwords ARE case sensitive. Once you get passed that you should see a screen something like this:

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Don't be alarmed if yours looks different, this just means you have a different router. Next you will need to find the portforwarding section, it's commonly called Gaming, or Applications, or something like that.

Remember that ipconfig thing we did? Check that again to find your IPv4 Adress, this will commonly be 192.168.1.101, 102, 103, etc. etc. Set your port up like mine, and use 25565 for the port, as that is the default port for minecraft:

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Then save the changes and you are good to go!

To check if the port is open, go to [ Register or Signin to view external links. ] and change the port to 25565 and test it, if it didn't work, PM me or ask for help. I can assist you as best I can.

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No-IP:

First off go to [ Register or Signin to view external links. ] . Make an account there.
Once you have made an account click on the link at the top that says "Download", and choose your OS and install the program, run the program and sign in with your e-mail and password. Now go back to the website, login to your account, and go to the Hosts/Redirects section, and click add a host. All you need to do is select the name you want. Now go back to that program, and check the IP you just registered to use on your computer, you can now connect to your server using that IP you registered instead of handing out your actual IP.

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Part 2: Getting Bukkit (can use other software but i highly recommend Bukkit )

I recommend you use the recommended builds of bukkit to avoid running into any problems, these builds can be found at [ Register or Signin to view external links. ] .
Once you have downloaded that move it into a new folder, and make a new .bat file in that same folder, you can use notepad to make the .bat file, but name the file run.bat when you save it.

In notepad, enter the following code in, and save it as run.bat:

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You may have to change the path to your java, as it may not be the same or may not work.

Once you have made that double click the run.bat file to run your server, congratulations, your running your server!

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So, what is a bukkit "build"?

Well, we all know minecraft isn't a fully developed game yet, so it's constantly being updated, this means that to keep up, bukkit is constantly being updated, these updates to bukkit are called "builds". Now there are 2 different kinds of builds, recommended builds, and developer builds. I recommend you to stick with the recommended builds unless you are okay with some things not working. The recommended builds can be found on the homepage of the bukkit site, whereas the developer builds can be found here. When a large update is out on minecraft, bukkit will most likely not work on it until it is updated, the developer builds will be available sooner, but may not work with everything, so inexeperienced users should stick with the recommended builds.

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Part 3: PLUGINS!

There are countless amounts of plugins available completely free, but I will be covering the ones that are essential to a great minecraft server.

To install the plugins, just move the files you download(after extracting the .zip or .rar) into your plugins folder in your minecraft server directory, then just start the server to install it.

Download: [ Register or Signin to view external links. ]
Wiki: [ Register or Signin to view external links. ]
Tons of useful information can be found on that wiki!

I won't go into detail on essentials because there really is not anything you need to configure, and the config file is very basic and very easy to understand, and all the information I would put here is also on the wiki.

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Worldedit Download: [ Register or Signin to view external links. ]
WorldGuard Download: [ Register or Signin to view external links. ]
Wiki: [ Register or Signin to view external links. ]

Here is a video on using WorldEdit and Worldguard:(not made by me)

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Download: [ Register or Signin to view external links. ]
Wiki: [ Register or Signin to view external links. ]

Craftbook adds more functionality to things like redstone on your server, to see what it really can do check out this post or look on the wiki.

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Download: [ Register or Signin to view external links. ]
Bukkit Post: [ Register or Signin to view external links. ]

iChat improves your chat, you will notice when we get into permissions you can set prefixes, suffixes, colors and more stuff for users names in chat, iChat let's you be able to do this, you can also use EssentialsChat or HeroChat

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