How To Make A MineCraft Server : A Safer Game Experience for Kids

By Matt Kelley Owner of Chicago Gifted Services

In my last post I espoused the reasons MineCraft is great for gifted kids. I did however not mention the one drawback. It does have an unmonitored chat ability. Although the chat is text only, the possibility of seeing foul language, and the possibility of adults online chatting with your child are probably drawbacks.

However, a nice solution is to build your own server within your home, and it doesn't take much technical expertise.

What you'll need:

An old computer with an OS : ubuntu, linux, windows, or mac
An internet connection with router for port forwarding.

So, to start you'll need to go to get a server setup file. You can do a "vanilla" server without the ability of plugins, and all the bells and whistles and have a pretty basic setup quickly by downloading this file and ensuring you have the most updated Java version. You then find the ip of your computer (instructions here) and then the ip of your internet connection by typing "what is my ip" into google.

You then go to your router and set up port forwarding to open port 25565 on the ip of the computer you found earlier. You can find how to port forward on different routeres by googling your router model and how to access virtual servers or port forwarding. You then start the server file you downloaded, go to the Minecraft game on another computer, type the ip of the internet address you found on Google and voila, you're done with the simple setup.

So, now onto the better and more complex setup. You need to first find a plugin-capable server file. I use Craft-Bukkit myself. You then download and follow the instructions listed here. Once done, you follow all the ip instructions above and run the server.

With a setup like CraftBukkit you then can go to a site like PlanetMinecraft.com and download worlds, and plugins at CraftBukkit and many other things that wil make your server top-notch.

So why are plugins worth it?

Well here's an example of my top ten and what they do:

Essentials: Adds too many feature to list, but modified chat, nicknames, and many other things that are listed on the site.
DisguiseCraft: Allows players to disguise themselves as other players or characters in the game.
CleanChat : Allows user to program certain words that are not allowed in chat (good way to kill swearing)
WorldEdit: Allows players to modify regions, paste whole buildings and worlds onto the server and generally makes building much, much faster.
WorldGuard: Allows players to lock their buildings and ensure they are not damaged by other players. Ensures no dramatic crying moments when your child has spent 10 hrs building something only to have someone destroy it.
DynMap: An awesome plugin that creates GoogleMap type maps of worlds so kids can find their creations when they lose them.

But you may be wondering, "Aren't plugins really hard to use?" Absolutely not. You drag the plugin files into the plugins folder created in earlier steps, restart the server, and Voila, you're done.

There are many other add-ons one can do with a setup like this, but for starters this gives you a pretty good server.

Good luck and enjoy,

To check out an example server with these plugins please use minesafe.net in the server ip address.
This will soon be a paid-membership server with locked members-only access where all users will need to provide proof of age and all server chats will have inappropritate language blocked.

If you are interested in becoming a member of that server, which goes to membership-only access on 4/1/13, use the following form here.https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1k-j2BJsiwYZheXGsGcFVpp3S8YfPm8VUc9QnFS5oKtc/viewform


Matt
www.cpsmagnet.com