Guide
How to make a website for your Minecraft server
Five routes, what each costs in money and in weekends, and the three features that need something running on your server no matter which you pick.
The five routes
| Route | Cost | Time | Your server’s data |
|---|---|---|---|
| A hosted builder for MinecraftEnderbeam, LeaderOS. Made for this, so the server data is the point rather than an add-on. | Yes:Free to $13 a month | Yes:An afternoon | Yes:Built in |
| A self-hosted Minecraft CMSNamelessMC, Azuriom. Free and open source, and you run the hosting, the database and the updates. | Yes:Free, plus hosting | Partly:A weekend, then upkeep | Partly:Through their plugins |
| Forum softwareXenForo. The best forums there are, if the forum is what your site actually is. | No:$195, then yearly | Partly:A weekend, then upkeep | No:One ageing add-on |
| A general website toolWordPress, Ghost, Wix. Enormous ecosystems, none of which knows what a Minecraft server is. | Partly:Free to $30 a month | Partly:Depends how far you go | No:Status at best |
| Just your storeA Tebex page and nothing else. Plenty of servers do this, and for a small server it is a fair answer. | Yes:Free to start | Yes:An hour | No:Not a website |
What a server site is actually asked for
In roughly the order players notice it is missing.
- Your IP, and a button that copies it
- Whether the server is up, and who is on it right now
- How to join, for Java and for Bedrock
- Rules, and a way to appeal a ban
- Your store, or at least a link to it
- Somewhere to post news that is not only Discord
- Staff applications, before you need them
Notice how much of that is your server talking rather than you writing. That is the part that decides which route suits you, and it is the part most guides skip.
The three hard parts, and why
Ranks, leaderboards and punishments. Whatever you build on, these are the three that will stop you, and it is worth understanding why before you spend a weekend finding out.
A website can ask your server two questions from outside: are you up, and roughly who is on you. That is the status ping, and it is how every “server status” widget on every platform works. It is also the end of what is reachable from outside.
A player’s rank lives in LuckPerms. Their playtime lives in whatever stats plugin you run. Their ban lives in LiteBans. Those are databases on your machine, and nothing on the internet can read them by asking nicely. So anything that shows them needs two halves: something running on your server that reads them and sends them out, and something on the website that receives them.
That is why the Minecraft-specific platforms ship a plugin and the general ones do not. It is not that WordPress could not — it is that somebody has to write and maintain both halves, against both WordPress releases and Minecraft releases, for free, forever.
Two things to sort out whichever route you pick
A domain. Buy it from a registrar, not from whoever builds your site. It costs a few pounds a year and it is the one thing that stays yours when you change your mind about everything else — every platform on that list can point at a domain you own.
Somewhere for people to talk. Discord is where your community already is, and a forum is where things stay findable six months later. Most servers want both, and the question is only whether your site can sign people in with the Discord account they already have.
If the Minecraft half is what you wanted, ours does that part.
Start freeEnderbeam is one of the five routes above. The comparisons say what each of the others is better at, including where we would send you elsewhere.