Everything you need after you hit Create Server — moving an existing world across, installing mods and plugins, and changing the settings people actually change.
Bring a single-player world or an old server world across. The server has to be stopped first — copying files underneath a running server is how worlds get corrupted.
1
In the panel, open the Console tab and click Stop. Wait until it reports the server is offline.
2
On your own machine, find the world folder. On Windows it is under %appdata%\.minecraft\saves — the folder is named after the world and contains level.dat.
3
Zip the world folder. Uploading one archive is far faster and far more reliable than uploading several thousand region files one by one.
4
Go to the Files tab, make sure you are in the server root, and drag the zip in to upload it.
5
Click the zip and choose Unarchive. You should end up with a folder containing level.dat.
6
Open server.properties and set level-name to the exact folder name — it is case sensitive. Save.
7
Start the server. Watch the console: if it generates a fresh world instead, level-name does not match the folder.
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Install mods
Mods need the matching loader. A Fabric mod will not load on NeoForge and vice versa, and a mod built for a different Minecraft version will usually stop the server booting.
1
Make sure the server was created with NeoForge or Fabric. Vanilla cannot load mods at all.
2
Stop the server.
3
In Files, open the mods folder. Create it if it is not there.
4
Upload the mod .jar files. Check each one is built for both your loader and your Minecraft version.
5
Anything marked client-side only — minimaps, shaders, most HUD mods — stays on your machine and must not go in this folder.
6
Start the server and read the console. A mod that fails will name itself in the error, which tells you exactly which jar to pull.
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Install plugins
Plugins are a different system to mods. They need a Paper or Spigot server, they go in a different folder, and players do not need to install anything to join.
1
Confirm the server is running Paper or Spigot. Vanilla, NeoForge and Fabric will ignore the plugins folder entirely.
2
Stop the server.
3
In Files, open plugins and upload the plugin .jar files.
4
Start the server once. Each plugin writes its own config folder inside plugins on first boot.
5
Stop, edit the configs it generated, then start again.
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Change your server settings
Almost everything lives in server.properties in the server root. Edit it in the panel, then restart — the file is only read at boot.
1
In Files, click server.properties to open the built-in editor.
2
Common ones: difficulty, gamemode, pvp, max-players, view-distance, spawn-protection and motd.
3
To make it invite-only, set white-list=true, then add people from the console with /whitelist add <name>.
4
Leave server-port and server-ip alone — those are set by the panel and changing them will take the server offline.
5
Save, then restart from the Console tab.
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Let your friends help run it
You can give friends access to the Minecraft server without ever sharing your account password. Sub-users get their own login and only the permissions you tick.
1
Open your server in the panel and go to the Users tab.
2
Click New User and enter their email address.
3
Tick the permissions you want them to have — Control for start/stop/restart and console, File for the file manager and SFTP.
4
They will get an email invite. Once they register they can manage the server from their own panel account.
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Keep your own backups
There are no server-side backups here. Every server has a backup allowance of zero — storing hundreds of gigabytes for a service nobody pays for is not something we can justify, so the Backups tab will not help you. The only copy of your world that exists is the one you download. Do this before any big change.
1
Stop the server from the Console tab in the panel. Archiving files while the server is writing to them is how you end up with a corrupt copy.
2
Open the Files tab and tick the box next to your save folder.
3
Click Archive. The panel packs the folder into a single file in the server root.
4
Click that archive and choose Download. For a large world, pull it over SFTP instead — browser downloads of multi-gigabyte files have a habit of failing near the end.
5
Delete the archive off the server once you have it, so it is not eating your disk space.
6
Keep the file somewhere safe. A server nobody plays on for seven days is removed, and your download is the only thing that survives that.