Make your Minecraft server yours

A fresh Minecraft server works — but in the multiplayer list it looks exactly like every other one: same dirt-block icon, same "A Minecraft Server" line. This guide turns it into yours. Every change here is done from the panel, and every one of them works on the free plan.

Set your MOTD

The MOTD ("message of the day") is the line players see under your server's name in their multiplayer list. Open the Properties page from your server menu and find the motd field — this is the one place you edit it. Don't touch server-ip or server-port; the panel manages those. Everything else on this page is yours.

Minecraft supports color and formatting codes in the MOTD (the classic § codes, and newer server software also understands MiniMessage-style tags). You rarely type those by hand — plenty of free MOTD generators online let you pick colors, add a second line, and copy out a ready-made string like this:

motd=§6My Server §7» §aSurvival with friends

Paste it into the motd field, save, and restart so the server re-reads the file. Bonus: the Settings page General tab has an offline MOTD, shown when your server is stopped — handy on the free plan, where the server sleeps when nobody's playing.

💡 Tip: The Settings page's General tab has an offline MOTD, shown while your server is stopped — handy on the free plan, where it sleeps when nobody's playing.

Add a server icon

That little image beside your server in the list is a plain PNG, and Minecraft is picky about it in exactly two ways: it must be 64×64 pixels and named server-icon.png — exactly that, no -2 or capital letters. Get those right and it just works.

1. Make or resize an image to 64×64 pixels and save it as server-icon.png.
2. Open the File Manager from your server menu, stay in the root (top-level) folder — the same folder that holds server.properties — and use Upload to drop the file in.
3. Restart the server.

Rejoin, and your icon appears. (If it doesn't, the troubleshooting section below covers the usual culprits.)

Control who can join: whitelist

A whitelist is the simplest way to keep a small server to just your friends. Two parts work together:

• On the Properties page, set white-list to true. If you also set enforce-whitelist to true, anyone not on the list who's already online gets removed the moment you enable it — useful for clearing out uninvited guests.
• Open the Players page and its Whitelist tab to add names. Type a player's Minecraft username and add them; remove them the same way. This edits the whitelist for you, so you never touch a file.

Restart after turning the whitelist on. From then on, only listed players get in — everyone else sees "You are not white-listed on this server." Add yourself first so you don't lock yourself out.

⚠️ Heads up: Add yourself to the whitelist first, or you'll lock yourself out along with everyone else.

Hand out powers: operators

Operators (ops) can run admin commands — change the time, teleport, kick, ban, stop the server. Grant it from the Players page Operators tab: add a username to op them, remove them to take it back.

Op sparingly. An operator can do almost anything to your world and server, so keep the list to people you genuinely trust.

🎯 Good to know: An operator can do almost anything to your world and server — op sparingly, and only people you genuinely trust. For everyone else, a permissions plugin (see Minecraft plugins) gives fine-grained control without handing over the keys.

Show trouble the door: bans

When someone needs to go, the Players page has two more tabs:

• Banned Players — ban by username. They can't rejoin even under a new IP.
• Banned IPs — ban an address, which stops account-hopping from the same connection.

Add and remove bans right from those tabs; the panel updates the ban lists for you.

The Properties page, group by group

MOTD, whitelist, operators and online-mode are the headline settings — but the Properties page holds the whole of server.properties, laid out in groups. You'll rarely touch most of these, but here's what each group is for so nothing is a mystery. Edit any of them on the Properties page, then restart. (The two you never touch, server-ip and server-port, are managed by the panel.)

Gameplay — the rules of your world:

World — how the map is made:

Spawning & protection:

Capacity & distance — the biggest performance levers:

💡 Tip: view-distance and simulation-distance are where most lag lives — both stay editable on the free plan. See Fixing Minecraft lag.

Access & identity:

Presentation — including resource packs:

Technical — leave at defaults unless you know you need them: enable-rcon (remote console) and enable-query (server-list queries) are off by default and most servers never touch them.

⚠️ Heads up: On the free plan, player-idle-timeout is forced to 10 minutes and max-tick-time is fixed — the panel re-applies these on save. Premium can turn the idle-kick off. Everything else above is yours to edit on any plan.

Optional: get on Falix's server list

Once your server looks the part, you can put it in front of players looking for somewhere to play. Open the Advertise page from your server menu: build a public listing with a live preview, publish it to Falix's server list, and collect votes. It's a friendly way to grow a small community — no premium plan required to list, though a paid boost exists if you want more visibility later.

When it doesn't work

• Icon doesn't appear — almost always the size or the name. Confirm it's exactly 64×64 and named server-icon.png in the root folder, then restart. Your own client also caches the list entry, so remove the server and re-add it.
• MOTD shows literal § or & symbols — the code style doesn't match your server software, or you didn't restart. Clear the codes to plain text to confirm the MOTD is being read, then re-add colors.
• "You are not white-listed" — including you — add your username on the Whitelist tab, or set white-list back to false while you sort things out.
• Whitelist seems ignored — white-list isn't set to true, or the server wasn't restarted after the change.
• You locked yourself out — use the Console page to run commands directly (whitelist add <you>, op <you>), or fix it on the Players page; both work even when you can't get in-game.

Next steps

• Cracked vs online mode — what the whitelist and usernames depend on
• Install plugins — permissions, chat, protection and more
• Manage your worlds
• How free game servers work