Request Help setting up a server

[Derpysauce]

Its been several years since I last played modded minecraft and am getting back into it because my group of friends are interested in a modded server.

I have experience with making modpacks in the past and have made one with about 70 mods. I have used multiMC to compress it and media fire to distribute it to my friend group. I plan to edit the configs and make copper not have 5 variants, but I can figure that out on my own. What I'm wondering about is how to actually set up the server. I have about 10 friends interested and will probably have at max 5 on at a time at various times of the day. I know that I could host on my PC, but my friend group is up at all times of the day.

So now that I'm through my life story my actual question is. What server host should I use? How do I send the mods to the server. From my understanding I need FTP, but what else do I need? From my understanding I need to separate client side mods from server side, but is there anything else? Sorry if this is a weird request I just don't want to go spending money before I'm 100% sure about things.

 

[Henry Link]

So, lets see if I can help a little here. But most of what you need you really should ask the hosting service about. Typically most of them have some web based portal you use to access the server, configure it and start/stop it. In addition they usually provide either FTP or SFTP access to the server so you can upload files. I personally use WinSCP for this part since it has a nice drag/drop feature so it feels like windows explorer.

As for the server vs client mods. For the most part, I would test the client pack on your PC at home but user the server version of forge. See if that launches. With most 1.12 packs you don't need to remove the client only mods. If that works then it just a matter of uploading forge and the config, mods, scripts and any other files you need to run the server to the hosting company.

One last bit of advise, don't use mediafire to give the pack to your friends. Or at least make sure it is private. It isn't right to re-host mods. Mods should only be downloaded from the mod authors preferred site. Most of them use curseforge now. So it maybe worthwhile to develop this pack in the twitch client and submit the finished pack to curseforge. That way you are doing things the legit and correct way.

 

[Derpysauce]

So, lets see if I can help a little here. But most of what you need you really should ask the hosting service about. Typically most of them have some web based portal you use to access the server, configure it and start/stop it. In addition they usually provide either FTP or SFTP access to the server so you can upload files. I personally use WinSCP for this part since it has a nice drag/drop feature so it feels like windows explorer.

As for the server vs client mods. For the most part, I would test the client pack on your PC at home but user the server version of forge. See if that launches. With most 1.12 packs you don't need to remove the client only mods. If that works then it just a matter of uploading forge and the config, mods, scripts and any other files you need to run the server to the hosting company.

One last bit of advise, don't use mediafire to give the pack to your friends. Or at least make sure it is private. It isn't right to re-host mods. Mods should only be downloaded from the mod authors preferred site. Most of them use curseforge now. So it maybe worthwhile to develop this pack in the twitch client and submit the finished pack to curseforge. That way you are doing things the legit and correct way.

Thanks for the advice. I will look into redistributing legitimately or at least making sure its private. I was not aware there was a server version of forge. Would I just send that rather than the normal forge version?

 

[Switchbladed]

FTP is something that the server host will typically provide, so there's nothing extra you need to do, but it is best to use something like FileZilla to access the FTP from your computer. WinSCP is another option as Henry mentioned.

To setup the server itself, this is probably the easiest guide to follow: https://shockbyte.com/billing/knowledgebase/42/How-to-install-any-Feed-The-Beast-FTB-Modpack.html

The server version of Forge is what will run on the server - you don't send this to your friends, this is what gets uploaded to the server. If you follow the guide above, it will explain how this works (it's the file that gets renamed to "custom.jar" in the tutorial).