[IMPORTANT] First post of August.

Staff Reform

Well, a staff reform is finally happening. I have been tired of the immaturity, sexual abuse, dirty language, and just how disgustingly our staff has been acting recently. I have reset all staff permissions to Trusted. There will be no questions about this change, and there will be no backtalk. I do not want anyone to take this personally, but this is a very important issue that not only makes Livecraft look bad, but it makes me look bad as a server owner.

Onto things of lighter weight

Do not worry, however, because you can reacquire your rank through work and diligence. I will be making a web-based system for applying for ranks. Each rank will have a list of requirements which need to be fulfilled before your application will be considered. Once we have a new team of staff, every new staff member will need to pass a vote in order to become staff. Livecraft will hopefully put more power in the hands of other staff to determine their staff, rather than just me picking who I think would be best. There will now be a cap of users per rank. There will only be at most four admins and six moderators. I will reimplement the assistant rank for users who are being voted on for staff. If the vote is passed, the user will be promoted to moderator. If the vote does not pass, then the user will stay on Assistant for a period of one month, or until they are deemed eligible for a re-vote.

Until then, Me (alfonsojon), Drak1234, and Imperialelite will be taking full responsiblity of server operation and administrative duties. EviLxXLoLLiEsXx will be taking care of user requests, griefing rollbacks, and chat monitoring.

 

Livecraft’s Powerful Plugins (And how to use them!)

Livecraft has a few plugins which can be extremely useful, but they require extensive knowledge on how to use said plugins. Our most handy plugin for builders and architects is called “Craftbook”. It contains a wide array of building and redstone features.

Knowing how to use this plugin can help you greatly. Here’s a link to the Craftbook wiki.

http://wiki.sk89q.com/wiki/CraftBook/Usage

Another very useful plugin: Essentials. This plugin is one that pretty much everyone has heard of, but probably hasn’t noticed it. Essentials is what makes Bukkit and Spigot servers seem “better” than Vanilla servers. Essentials provides the new commands, utilities, and functions expected from a more professional server.

Because Essentials adds hundreds of commands more than what Vanilla has to offer, there is quite a bit to memorize. Here is the official Essentials Command Guide:

http://wiki.ess3.net/wiki/Command_Reference

 

Enjoy!

– Jonathan Alfonso (alfonsojon)

[IMPORTANT] Permissions reset.

Me, being the genius I am, forgot to back up permissions. Not only that, I managed to accidentally delete all of our plugins. This includes Essentials and GroupManager. Your items are fine, but it’ll say “Welcome, blah to Livecraft!”, and permissions are currently not implemented. I’m working on fixing this asap, and I will have the whitelist off ASAP

Apologies, Jonathan Alfonso (Alfonsojon)

My personal blog is now up!

Hey guys, as you may know by now, I’m a tech guy. I do tech as a living, and I’m planning on keeping it that way. In order to just have a place to put my tech babbles and rantings, I’ve made a separate blog in case any of your are interested. My blog is at alfonsojon.wordpress.com, and it’s titled “{musings of alfonsojon}”. I hope you enjoy!

– Jonathan Alfonso (alfonsojon)

Livecraft Ranks & Permissions Guide now available!

Hey guys, I’ve been working on a complete Ranks & Permissions guide and it’s available now. Go ahead and check it out by going to the home page and clicking “Rules”.

I also made a PDF available here for you guys to print out if you would want to do so.

– Jonathan Alfonso (alfonsojon)

Excessive Server Immaturity

Hello guys, I’m posting about the extreme immaturity that has been happening on the server. I was dealing with it for a while, but now it’s getting beyond ridiculous. You guys know how to spell, you can speak english, and you can talk without using the word faggot or “fgt”. Using these words occasionally was fine, but now it’s becoming ridiculous.

Is it possible for you guys to grow up? I am really getting tired of you guys acting like immature five year olds. I expect more out of you, we’re supposed to be a family friendly server.

Please grow up.

– Jonathan Alfonso (alfonsojon)

Minecraft 1.6

As you may or may not know, Minecraft 1.6 is right around the corner. Minecraft 1.6 is due on July 1st (Porky_Sporky’s birthday :D), but the server WILL NOT be ready for Minecraft 1.6 for a while. We are not resetting the map, but Spigot (our server software) will take a bit to update to Minecraft 1.6 and then our plugins must then be updated to be compatible with Spigot for Minecraft 1.6 as well. This process can take up to a week, so be aware of any news on the website regarding Minecraft 1.6.

Goals for Minecraft 1.6:

  1. New spawn?
  2. Builder plots near spawn
  3. Towny?
  4. Increased stability
  5. Skylands RPG world possible
  6. Removal of creative from main world, usage of flatlands for creative tasks.
  7. Permissions fixes and updates
  8. Texture pack update (Same texture pack, but updated)
  9. Bug fixes!

Bugs to be fixed:

  1. Inventory being cleared when disconnecting in creative
  2. Flatlands not working
  3. Portals not working properly for all users
  4. Random server crashes
  5. Timeout error when trying to log in

As usual, this will be hopefully done before we launch for 1.6. The server will not be down, but you CAN NOT UPDATE TO 1.6. When the server description is prefixed by [1.6], you can then update.

Regards, Jonathan Alfonso

P.S.: Keep a backup of your 1.5 JAR file (located in %APPDATA%/.minecraft/bin for Windows users) prior to updating. You can swap out the new Minecraft JAR with your backup easily by renaming them (i.e. minecraft.jar and 1_5_backup.jar, minecraft.jar and 1_6_backup.jar).

Cheerio.
~ David (Drak)

Backend Updates

The server will be undergoing maintenance on the back end of the server, so there may be server shut downs occasionally. The server will be running on a regular schedule tomorrow.

Security Briefing

From MCBans Administration:

“Posted 03 June 2012 – 10:16 AM
Hi everyone,

Everybody by now should be well aware of a major problem that is spreading around rapidly.
Session Hijacking is the act of stealing your session ID and using it to go under your username.

To combat this, we recommend everybody become very aware of their surroundings. Please only join servers that are trusted or well known in the Minecraft community. If a random person invites you to go to a server, I would recommend that you check into it before you decide to go to that server.

Remember an easy 3-step process:
1) Do you trust that person? If yes, join. If no, go to next step.
2) Is it a trusted or well-known server? If yes, join. If no, go to next step.
3) If no to the above, do NOT join the server unless you are absolutely sure it is safe.

From all of us at MCBans,

Firestar, StracciPwns, Corpdraco
MCBans Administration
www.mcbans.com

Brendan M.

IGN: Corpdraco
MCBans Staff Member”