Things you wish you setup before server going live

[Jim Armstrong]

I am about 12 hours away from putting my server up live. It will be a Korean FTB Unleashed server, of which there are very few available. I will be posting on a few Korean minecraft sites, along with detailed instructions on how to download, install and launch an FTB game as it is all mostly new.

So, I am wodering, what are any server side mods you wish you had installed before going live?

What are any server utilities or processes, backup, restore etc that you wish you had setup before going live?

Is there anything that required you to shut down your server for a few hours that you would do *before* 'launching' your server next time? (ie particular restrictive config settings, etc).

Are there any recommended backup/restore/profiling tools that should be configured/running/monitoring on day 1?

At the moment:
- I have a few items banned (craft, use own) using Permissions Ex, ModifyWorld..
- I have WorldGuard/Worldedit setup to protect my spawn area...
- I have created a mining world age, and blocked use/create/own of mystcraft items (users who register on my enjin forum can get use access to the bookstand/linking book to the age)
- I haven't setup any backup/restore yet, so I guess that is something I will do right now. I have MCMyadmin running, but most just use that for the web console link. Most of my configuration is done in the various yaml and txt files.


I see a lot of admins posting shots showing chunks loaded, and chunk loaders in the world. It's a white grid-like screenshot.. What program is that? Any other profiling plugins that are recommended day 1?

 

[DZCreeper]

Overly restrictive permissions and configs make a server bad. I wouldn't even consider playing there.

To access the chunkloaders map, just do /chunkloaders while in the game and your OP.

 

[Francis Baster]

If you are anything like me, you will enjoy tinkering with the server so much that players tend to just get used to the restarts xD. I recommend having automated restarts every 10 hours or so, then any config changes will be made during the scheduled restarts. Automated restarts can also help keep your memory usage in check.

Recommended administration tools:
MyTown and aPerf (forge mods)
aPerf is a profiling tool that lets you analyse entities, tile entities and chunkloading tickets.
MyTown is the best grief protection mod I know of for Forge servers. The majority of mods will bypass WorldGuard and Bukkit-based protections, unless you are using a patched mod designed to use fake players and issue Bukkit events. Some mods such as ComputerCraft come with a fake player and respect Bukkit protections, but most don't. MyTown on the other hand protects against nearly everything, even nukes and mining lasers. Bear in mind that nothing can protect against PortalGun block grabbing, so I have disabled this feature on my server. Both of these mods are designed with the ability to use a Bukkit permissions system if you are using MCPC+.

zPermissions. I realise you are already using PEX, but if you ever decide to change I highly recommend taking a look at zPermissions. It's a very well designed plugin. I switched because of it's straightforward method of handling world based permissions. It also is the only permissions plugin to allow the assigning of permissions depending on which WorldGuard region the user is in. (No essentials.sethome inside spawn for example).

Minecraft Remote Toolkit. A lightweight server wrapper for crash detection and automated restarts. Additional features such as server heartbeats and in-game commands if running MCPC+.

This assumes you are hosting on Linux: You may want to consider having a multi-user screen session over SSH for sharing your console. While this is trickier than using a web browser, you will probably save on system resources by saying goodbye to MCMyAdmin.
Basical multi-user screen tutorial

Good luck with your server!