My journey to becoming a server owner didn’t start right away. I tried running my open world with LAN so my oldest son could join me. It wasn’t long after this I purchased a PC copy of Minecraft for my autistic son so he could join us if he wanted.

I discovered quickly that using LAN for Minecraft is not as user friendly as it appears. It doesn’t have an easy way to troubleshoot and the network settings are finicky. Some versions of Minecraft were easier to use than others. We had the most success with version 1.7.2.

After awhile I thought about looking into the option of hosting a server map on my PC in the hopes it would be easier. The server set up tutorial found on http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Server was daunting at best. I’ve since discovered many of the guides found in this wiki is basically written for people who already understand this stuff. Yeah, there is a page for data values and chunk formatting, but there is no explanation on the syntax needed on the page to use any of it.

Anyhow, I read up on port forwarding on http://portforward.com/english/applications/port_forwarding/Minecraft_Server/ and get my server set up on my PC. Then I had to figure out how I could log into the map with the same PC it was hosted on via “localhost”. My sons had to log in using the LAN IP of my PC to log in, but my hubby, working with the army out of state, and my niece were able to log in just fine. We had some lag, but aside from that connections were stable.

I tried out several maps, but it was “Birch Woods” that received the most positive response. It was with this map that I began learning how to run a server… like trying to figure out why some doors/gates/chests/command blocks in town only worked for me. It took me a long while to find out it was due to the built in spawn protection, what that was, and how it affected the map. I’m still working on learning where the spawn zone is based upon the spawn protection setting. Yes, I see the numbers in the tutorial. I mean translating that onto the map so I know where not to build certain features.

It wasn’t long before I discovered the can of worms that comes with hosting a server when you have a dynamic IP address. To make matters even more challenging, my router stopped saving my port forwarding settings whenever I tried to update them. I eventually decided that if I wanted to continue to play the game with my hubby, I would need to find a server host with a static IP.

I’ll talk more about the Birch Woods map and the Sandbox map hosted on my PC in greater detail in later posts.

Originally published on LiveJournal. Archived here on 09/13/2019.