Setting up a Minecraft server for the neighborhood kids. Need advice.

[bbhaag]

So like the title says I need some help setting up a Minecraft server. My sons have several friends in the neighborhood that all come over to play Minecraft over our LAN, but recently they want to play at their own houses. Ages are from 6-12 so the easier to join the better.

I DON'T want to have a special machine setup in my house dedicated to this. Is this even possible? Does such a thing exist or do I need to just tell them they are SOL?

 

[Newbian]

You can always pay for one as many services will host it.

 

[Unoid]

Remember you need server mods with a password otherwise your server will be published by default. Ppl will join and grief . Ask me how I know.

 

[Wyndru]

Here are the basics:
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Tutorials/Setting_up_a_server

As you mentioned, in the LAN they can share maps with each other, but outside you would either need a paid service or host an actual server yourself, which means configuring the server, opening up the required firewall ports and sharing your ISP provided IP with them. You could also register a domain name if you would rather not hand out your IP. There are other was to do it with Hamachi, but I've never gone that route, since I already had a webserver up and running.

I don't know if minecraft "realms" are up and running yet, they might be still in development, but I think those will be paid too. They will be public realms that they can create and join together (hosted private servers created right from in-game).

The server doesn't "have" to be up all of the time, but obviously while anyone wants to play. It doesn't have to be a dedicated machine either.

Remember you need server mods with a password otherwise your server will be published by default. Ppl will join and grief . Ask me how I know.

You had an issue with this? I have 4 servers running, none of them have ever been griefed. I just added names to the whitelist as needed (family and friends that wanted to play).

The only mods I use are remote toolkit (so it restarts itself each night) and essentials.

 

[HydroSqueegee]

no-ip.com so you can dole that name out instead of your IP. makes it much easier, especially if your IP changes. Its what i used when i had my minecraft server going.

 

[BrightCandle]

Amazon's EC2 service can give you a low end server for free over a year. That may well be enough for your needs combined with no-ip to give it a more usable name.

If you need more RAM than the amazon free service gives you then you probably want to start looking elsewhere for a Virtual Machine that has the RAM the game needs. From my own server I see I give it 1.5GB of RAM which would actually be an amazon small instance and that isn't free. But there are lots of providers out there of Virtual Machine hosting all over the world and you can often get a box, remote desktop into it or SSH into it and set it up with the game server. Many you can start and stop and only pay for the running time and storage or if you want to run it continuously you can rent something on a monthly basis.

Let us know what country you are in and then someone may be able to recommend a company that provides these rentable virtual machines.

 

[Majcric]

Remember you need server mods with a password otherwise your server will be published by default. Ppl will join and grief . Ask me how I know.

How do you know?:hmm: