Guides

Plain-English guides for running a Minecraft server.

Start with how to make a Minecraft server if you have not run one before — it covers the choice between hosting it on your own PC and paying someone else to, which server software to pick, and how much RAM a given player count actually needs. The rest of the guides go deeper on things that bite people later: linking several servers into one network behind a proxy, and the config changes we apply to every new server.

Every guide here is written against servers we actually run, so the commands, file paths and error messages are the ones you will really see. Where a step only applies to certain server software or certain Minecraft versions, the guide says which — tick metrics, for one, do not exist on Vanilla and Fabric below Minecraft 1.20.3, and a guide that pretended otherwise would waste your evening.

Minecraft server out of memory: what actually causes it

Exit code 137, OutOfMemoryError and silent restarts are three different failures. How to tell them apart, and why a heap equal to your tier causes most of them.Read →

How to use a truetick server as a backend for an external Velocity proxy

Put a truetick server behind a Velocity proxy on another host: the exact steps, the deterministic public port, and why the proxy needs a full restart.Read →

How to set up a Minecraft server network (Velocity proxy)

Link several Minecraft servers into one network: a Velocity proxy with backends players hop between in one session. The exact config and the errors to expect.Read →

Pre-tuned server configs: exactly what we change and why

Every JVM server here starts with Aikar's GC flags and two server.properties keys, plus seeded config files on Paper and Purpur. What each one does, and why.Read →

How to make a Minecraft server (2026 guide)

A plain-English guide to making a Minecraft server: self-hosting vs a provider, picking Paper or Fabric, RAM by player count, and getting friends connected.Read →