At its heart, Minecraft is a game built by its community just as much as its own development team. Numerous different kinds of servers which arguably are significantly more popular than Vanilla ones would not be possible without the power of third-party plugins. As a part of this guide, we will go over what plugins are along with how to use them and some popular ones to get you started.
Spigot is a heavily modified version of CraftBukkit with hundreds of improvements and optimizations. All plugins compatible with Craftbukkit are also compatible with Spigot, and it provides even more plugins to choose from. As this is the most popular server software used, it stands to reason we recommend and offer Spigot for a server with plugins.
What are Minecraft Plugins?
Plugins are, to Minecraft, as extensions are to browsers. Third-party developers use these to write additional code and plug it in the server. As these do not modify the game itself, such as in the case of mods, they are more limited with what they can do. However, this also means that they only need to be installed on the server’s side. No modifications are necessary in your own game files to get them working.
Plugins have a variety of functionalities and do not have a single purpose in mind. They can provide a multitude of extra commands to better manage the server and add in fun and useful mechanics, such as the ability to set who can access and build in certain areas, add prefixes and suffixes to names, create different ranks with access to different commands, add RPG elements, add virtual economies, and many more.
There are thousands of plugins available on the Spigot repositories that you can choose from to spice up your server. However, most of these plugins are each made by a separate developer, meaning that incompatibility issues and bugs can appear with a large number of plugins installed. Sticking to the most popular plugins is the best option, as these have been in development for years, and are far more stable, and are known to have little compatibility problems with other plugins.
Installing a plugin is a simple process using our Minecraft server hosting services. As for managing your server, we provide the Multicraft control panel, which comes with an easy to use plugin installer feature called BukGet. With this feature, you can browse through plugins from multiple repositories, find more information about them and install any of the versions available.
What are the best Minecraft plugins?
This is a question that might sit on your mind when first getting into plugins. The answer highly depends on the type of server you want to have, which is the beauty of adding plugins to your server. The possibilities are virtually endless.
Some notable plugins are:
Essentials: A plugin that you will find on mostly all servers, Essentials offers over a hundred commands and features to better enjoy and customize your server. Want to set a warp point for your home, a sign shop, a virtual economy, or tens of administrative commands for your server? All of that, and more, can be found in Essentials.
Multiverse: This plugin allows the creation and usage of multiple worlds of different types, seeds, the ability to restrict which animals and mobs spawn on each world, and even a custom generator to apply custom world templates to your own worlds.
You can find a list of more of our recommended plugins here.
Conclusion
Plugins are a great way to add new functionality to a normal Vanilla Minecraft serverserver. Whether it be adding in shops for players to buy items they would like, intense minigames to satisfy competitive people, or just a queue system for those large player loads, plugins can do almost anything. The Spigot platform offers hundreds of unique projects that really show off how creative the Minecraft community is, and with our services, we hope that you will be able to experience them to their fullest.
