How to Create a Bukkit Minecraft Server

Last Updated: July 13, 2020

As Minecraft grows increasingly popular, some players may find it irritating to continuously come up against full servers. This article will provide an in-depth look on how to create a Minecraft server for you and your friends using Bukkit. See Step 1 below to get started.

Method 1

Method 1 of 2:

Installing Bukkit

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Open up a new browser tab and go to http://www.minecraft.net
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On the right side of the screen, you'll see "Play Minecraft". Below that heading you will see two links that say "In browser" and "Download". Click on the link that says Download.

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Under the third heading that says "Multiplayer Server", you'll see another link that says "Minecraft_Server.exe". Download this server and place it anywhere on your computer for now. Be sure it's in a place you'll remember later so you can access it more easily, like your desktop.
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After downloading the server executable, go to dl.bukkit.org. If you see a version that matches your Minecraft version, download that file.
- If you don't see one that matches your Minecraft version, you will either have to use a developmental build (not recommended for beginners) or play with a downgraded version of Minecraft that matches the current recommended build you just saw.
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Move the file once it's done downloading to your desktop. Now would be the time to move the Minecraft_Server.exe you downloaded before to your desktop.
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Create a new folder on your desktop. This can be named anything you want, but try to name it something that explains what will be in the folder. "Server", "MC_Server", and "Minecraft_Server" are all decent examples of possible folder names.
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Move the .jar file and the .exe into the new folder you created.
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Open the folder and right click on the .jar file. Select "Rename" and name the file "craftbukkit".
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Open up Notepad. Enter the following, formatted the same way (for Windows):
- java -Xmx1024M -jar craftbukkit.jar -o true
  PAUSE
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In Notepad, click on File and Save As. Under the drop-down menu that says "Save as type: Text Documents (*.txt)", click on All Files. Save the file as: run.bat
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Make sure run.bat is in the same folder as the server executable and the Craftbukkit jar. Now, double click on run.bat and you might see Command Prompt open up and a bunch of error messages. This is completely normal the first time you run a server since it is generating all of the files necessary. Once the world is generated, stop the server by typing "stop" in Command Prompt without quotes.
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Once the server is successfully stopped, you'll see a sentence that says "Press any key to continue..." Just press any key and Command Prompt will automatically close for you. If you go back to your server folder, you should see a bunch of files that were created after running your server. Leave these alone for now.

Method 2

Method 2 of 2:

Using Bukkit Plugins

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Installing and customizing plugins is a little complicated to most people. For the sake of this article, let's just install default plugins that are essential to running a non-Vanilla Multiplayer Server. Ironically, we'll be installing the plugin called EssentialsX. Open a new browser tab and go to https://dev.bukkit.org/projects/essentialsx
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Once there, click Download on the right side of the screen. You'll be taken to a new page, so just click Download again. Once you finish downloading the plugin, open up the .zip folder and copy the .jar files you see in it. Go to the folder that has your server files in it. You should see a folder called plugins. Open that up and paste the files in the folder.
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Now click back on your server directory folder to go back to the section with your run.bat file. Run the server, and you should now see the tag [EssentialsX] in some messages on start-up. This is just creating the necessary files in your plugins folder. Now stop the server as described above.
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EssentialsX has now been installed to your server. Go back to the main folder of your server and somewhere by the run.bat file should be something called server.properties. Open this file. You might have a prompt pop up telling you to search the web for something to open this file, but just click on the option to choose from existing programs, hit OK and select Notepad.
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In the server.properties file, you can customize your server to suit you and your players' play-style. You can also change the amount of people that can enter your server, and you can even set it to "whitelist" mode, which would only allow people you specify in a different file to log in to the server. Go ahead and mess around with a few of the settings as you see fit. Change some of the values that say "true" to "false". For example: By default, allow-nether is set to true. The Nether tends to cause lag on servers. Change allow-nether=true to allow-nether=false
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Another option is to change the default gamemode. The gamemode by default is set to 0, which is the Survival gamemode. Change this value 0 to 1, which is Creative.
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Finally, save the server.properties file and close it. Double-click run.bat again to start up your server and open up your regular Minecraft client once the server is completely up.. Log in to Minecraft, navigate to the Multiplayer Server page, select Direct Connect, and type in "localhost" without quotes. Join the server and you should successfully join the server you created. On command prompt, type in the command: op <your exact account name here> (as shown in the picture to the right). This command will give your account name operator status, which gives you access to just about every command. Choose a good looking spot and hit the T key in Minecraft and type: /setspawn
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With your spawn set, all you need to do is learn how to portforward and you're on your way to playing on your Minecraft server with your friends.