CraftBukkit

CraftBukkit is a server mod for Minecraft that adds a new level of flexibility to how your Minecraft server is run.

Minecraft is one of the most popular games of the last ten years and from it's humble beginnings as a physics based crafting game posted on an innocuous thread on a forum, it's grown to be a cultural phenomenon and an industry giant. In single player you're given a near infinite world of numerous 'biomes' full of harvestable and mineable resources that you can craft into useful items, weapons and armour. During the day you are free to roam at your leisure but at night time or in dark places you are hounded by a variety of monsters.

One of the major appeals of Minecraft and a key component to it's continued longevity is multiplayer. From it's first iteration the Minecraft dev team has heaped on features and content at a regular pace and multiplayer is key amongst them. It meant that for the first time you could invite your friends into a private server where you could build and mine and craft together. With it's introduction and the growing prevalence of servers people began to adapt the game and create whole new games within it. Anyone who takes even a cursory glance at Minecraft on YouTube will see game modes of incredible variety that all stem from user created content on private and public servers.

If you're looking to open and run your Minecraft server or if you have a Minecraft server already that you want to do more with, CraftBukkit could help. The business of creating and managing a Minecraft server manually is a fiddly one at best and if you don't have the technological know how then you could end up with something that's far from what you're looking for. With CraftBukkit you have a whole set of easy to use tools that are made by Minecrafters for Minecrafters. The options and variables that are available to you via CraftBukkit match all of the popular settings you've come to know from playing on Minecraft servers but don't leave you digging through code or traipsing through forums trying to find the correct settings or amendments to your server.

Setting it Up

Once you've download CraftBukkit move the CraftBukkit.jar file over to the location you'd like the server to be run from. From here, open up your favourite text editor (notepad works just fine) and type:

java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar craftbukkit.jar

PAUSE

Save this file as "run.bat". It's important to note that if you save this file as a .txt it won't work. Move that file to the same directory as CraftBukkit.jar and there you go, clicking on Run.bat should start up CraftBukkit!

If you're looking to set up a Minecraft server and want to do it right then CraftBukkit is a versatile and powerful tool that will leave you with the desired result, rather than with you pulling your hair out!

Pros

• Easy to Use
• Flexible and Versatile
• Allows Fully Customisable and Manageable Servers

Cons

• Manual Install Can Be a Little Tricky for Non-Techies