How to Start a Minecraft Server!

So you’ve decided to start your own minecraft server and don’t know where to begin first off congratulations you’re starting down a path that can lead to countless sleepless nights making memories with some of the coolest people on the Internet if and it’s a big if you take your time

And do it right I’m far from perfect but over the last year and a half I’ve had the pleasure of building an amazing community on the unity SMP server so here is my ultimate guide to running a minecraft server well actually my ultimate guide to running a vanilla minecraft server

Wait no it’s more like my ultimate guide to running a vanilla Community Oriented maybe it’s my ultimate guide I go with this video is to give you the basics of what it takes to start a server how to manage a community and hopefully you can learn from successes and mistakes I’ve

Made along the way this will be a relatively broad over but if I feel like making another video getting into the real nitty gritty I might make a part 2 we’ll see so let’s get started first off let’s talk about this I’ve had the pleasure of building

An amazing community though it was a part of a snappy video intro it’s something I’d like to briefly cover before we get in above our heads here you are not nor should your goal be to single-handedly build or run a community if my character had fingers there would

Have been air quotes there your role as a server owner should be to provide an environment in which a community has the potential to flourish you are picking out a nice flower pot getting some rich soil and planting a seat and no amount of micromanaging can force that seed to

Grow you just have to sit back and watch as the seed or server begins to sprout and grow into something beautiful from the environment you’ve created now before you go and get a god complex based on that analogy keeping your ego in check is a seemingly innocuous but

Very important part of running a server you own a minecraft server so that puts you just above twitch chat moderator and right below a Reddit user who makes it to the front page with repose as far as online clout goes so don’t get all power-hungry and demand your playerbase worship you and never

Question your decisions but wait you don’t even have any players do you little buddy much less a minecraft server itself so let’s talk about that to run a minecraft server you first need to purchase a minecraft server so there you are feeling all inspired you’re gonna do it

You’re really gonna do it you have ten bucks of disposable income you can burn and you fire up the old Google and you’re immediately overwhelmed the first five Google pages have real options and the old tried-and-true method of picking the first link under the Google ad isn’t

Gonna work so you turn to YouTube top five cheap Minecraft servers yep same thing an overwhelming amount of results and if you watch any of them you start to notice that the number ones on their list seem to always be the provider that is sponsoring the video hmm

Well I’ll save you some time there are no right answers but we have an advantage we’re looking to run a vanilla server which means to start out you can get a relatively inexpensive provider you don’t have any players yet so the server should run great as your

Community grows you will have to invest in a better provider and implement some back-end solutions to improve the experience for players all right you’ve picked out a nice flower pot server provider hey you even went as far as to make a discord look at you go now comes

A very important step in all of this you were so excited to start a server you forgot to take a moment and think about what kind of server you want this is critical because as you move on to advertising your server you need to provide an explanation for what you

Expect from players and what players can expect from the server a sort of mission statement if you will in my case I had burned through a few servers where you log on and all you really were was another little head on the tab list a

Tiny fish in a big sea if you will so my goal is to create a server that focused on community and unity between the players since community minecraft server sounds like the kind of server you’d go to when you want to get your gen Ed’s

Out of the way before you apply to a real minecraft server I went with unity as my servant this served a dual purpose first unity minecraft server on a reddit post gives people an immediate summation of the atmosphere I was looking to provide secondly it sounds badass Emma just make

Sure you know what you want and make that clear and the ads you post or else you’re asking a lot out of a random stranger on the Internet – just take a flying leap and hope your empty little directionless server is a good spot to land I think I’ll just jump

In here real quick and mention this I was fortunate enough to start my server ownership with a good friend Nathan man mr. Jones link in the description then is wise beyond his years those years are still unclear but based on his voice I’m guessing 40 50 it was

Helpful to get all the discord stuff together and offer some input on things but the real value and starting your server with someone like thin is being able to bounce all of your ideas and thoughts off of them a different perspective can be really advantageous

And will be priceless to you as you get deeper and deeper into running your server but not everybody’s gonna be as lucky as I was not everybody has a thin and frankly I’m not really inclined to share him alright let’s get back on track you have a server you have a name

You have an idea of the type of community you want you have a world loaded up and you have a discord and maybe you’ve got one or two friends from past servers willing to give your grand endeavor a shot but now comes the scary part casting your line out into the big

Ol internet ocean and seeing what bites well don’t worry if it’s anything like my experience you’ll be spammed with responses soon enough granted regardless of how clear of instructions you give them on how you want to be contacted to join they’ll comment on your post send you PMS with incoherent leads be send

Your mom a postcard with their username literally anything but what you ask for but that’s okay at least you’re getting some interest now don’t get too excited and add any old death King 1265 to your discord assuming you’ve posted your ads to Reddit take a moment and look through

Their common and post history and relatively speaking judge the book by its cover this is sort of your only option to ensure you’re adding what appears to be a good player to your little community you don’t have the luxury of being super picky since you’re just starting out but this is the start

Of your community and it’s important to make sure it has its best shot of succeeding now no matter how scrupulous and Sherlock Holmes en you are you’re still gonna get some bad apples Unity’s discord has had its fair from porn spammers to voice-chat screamers we’ve seen it all but don’t be

Disheartened as long as you’re quick with the banned button it’ll be okay sort of a second firewall that most servers including unity use is a server application process you don’t have to ask for their social security number GPA and a pregnancy test but having potential players fill out a quick

Questionnaire can be super useful now I don’t think we’ve ever turned a player away strictly based on their application but it is helpful to set your expectations about that player we ask a variety of questions on the unity application but the two that carry the most weight are how often and for how

Long do you usually play and do you plan to use voice chat these two questions go back to my original mission statement with unity to build a tight-knit community focus server if a potential player says they only play on the weekends for an hour so and don’t use

Voice chat we know they aren’t really a fit for unity and that’s nothing against those players there are plenty of other servers out there that they’d fit into better you don’t have to waste your life away building oversized empty mega builds 10 hours a day to be a good

Player it’s just not the type of player we want on unity so keep your mission statement in mind and consider making a questionnaire that will help you gauge how a potential player will fit into that framework ok back to that analogy we started with that if you’re still watching you’ve probably forgotten about

By now we have a nice pot some good soil and a warm little windowsill and now with the players you gain from your ads your little seed has been planted now just sit back and wait for it to grow you’ve got to be patient though you won’t have an amazing community

Overnight I don’t know some kids in my fifth grade biology class pointed their lima beans and came back the next day with bushes but I just had a Styrofoam cup full of soggy dirt anyways be patient if you’ve set up your framework halfway decent you’ll start to see

Growth and with growth comes a whole new set of issues the topics I’m about to brush over can get super in-depth super quick but I’ll save that for another time as your community grows civil problems on the server and even if you waste your life away building oversized

Empty mega builds you won’t be able to manage it all on your own one thing you can do on your own is to invest in a more powerful server or switch to a more premium provider with more players comes more lag and with more lag comes more players whining about lab

And that’s not fun for anyone so whether it’s through crowdfunding from your players are you just feeling all warm and fuzzy about your little community and shoving a few more quarters into your computer’s SD card slot invest in a better server I made the mistake of sticking with a low quality provider for

Too long I guess I have commitment issues I don’t know I did upgrade the servers RAM and all that good stuff but the service was low quality from the start and I should have left while beginning was good where were we ah yes more players more problems in order to manage your server

And your discord you’ll want to select a few of your more trustworthy players to become your moderators or admins in my case the community is mature and responsible enough that we don’t really need the mid tier of moderators to manage the discord and such so I just

Had to pick a few admins thankfully as I previously mentioned I had think bam admin numero uno my right-hand man down the road I chose a few other of my more trustworthy players to become admins but you’ll want to make sure you have an appropriate ratio of admins to players

Not only because you want your admins to have some street cred in the community but because in order for them to operate effectively they’ll most likely be opt now on a semi vanilla or modded server you can have permission based rinks and such to limit and control power but on

Vanilla it’s pretty much all or nothing this goes back to making sure you trust your admins as they can quite literally make or break your server you’ll want to keep an eye on them just to be sure everything’s kosher at first but if you’ve chosen well they’ll act as

Extensions of yourself by helping players and ensuring that the community maintains its original mission statement well that’s about it I guess this is definitely a massive oversimplification of what it takes to run a minecraft server but in just 10 minutes and 18 seconds we’ve covered what should help

You get started in case you’ve just skipped to the end of the video to hear my joke new outro music which I can’t blame me I’ll just sum up the main points real quick one more time start your server with a goal in mind know what you’re looking for in players and

Know what you can do to help those players reach the collective goal of the server create infrastructure through ads application rules and discord management that will ensure the type of growth community you’re looking for invest in the server when the time comes you will not regret it and your players will

Appreciate it and lastly surround yourself with admins you trust and that will help you reach your goals for the server I started unity a year and a half ago and I don’t claim to know everything but through trial and error and a goal for the server that I’ve never strayed from

I’ve had the pleasure of being part of an amazing and loving little community it may not be much to an outsider but it’s my little corner of the internet and I wouldn’t trade it for the world hope you found this helpful or at least mildly interesting but

That’s all I’ve got for now bye [Applause] See I told you it was dope outro music