Minecraft Server, What to do? Oh what to do? Options

[Aki]

Hullo to those of you already sucked into that psychologists wet dream known as "Minecraft" or "pleasure through monotony" (as I like to refer to it). Hello also to those of you that wish to view our dirty habit and aim your stinkbombs of scorn at us, firing wildly from afar! Welcome one, welcome all!

Ok so ... I'm addicted ... and we have currently got our wonderful Leborn hosting our Sneaky Monkey Utopia server. This is pure awesomeness.

However the server can only really be accessed when Leborn brings it online (this makes cold turkey happen in me, don't know about anyone else). I feel its unfair to demand Leborn keep this server online 24/7 just so at 5am I can drunkenly marvel at my 1M cubed architectural monstrosities of the day and reluctantly drag myself away from my cubist paradise.

I offer the alternative.

I can host.

My PC is on 24/7.

It gets turned off where there is a power cut/system fail/important update/coffee incident ... um ... and that's it pretty much.

Now the issues are, should you wish to take me up on this offer:

1. How can I make sure my PC is secure if I'm opening ports? I'm willing to do this but only if my security can be maintained so I'm unsure about what processes are involved here.

2. This would mean us either starting a new world server or finding some way of exporting our current world to me and installing it on my PC to run as a server. I have no idea how we might go about that.


I'm only posting this so that officially we can all get our good ideas down in text for us all to knock around

[Aki]

Kermit, my green AK toting chum, I think its time we took you up on your exceptionally kind offer.

Firstly, have you played Minecraft yet?

If not I must warn you not to. It's horribly addictive and yet, in essence, totally pointless and a waste of life-force. I've not been this addicted to something since 9 years ago when I actually considered rehab (back then I managed without it... I'm not sure I could this time lol).

So really the first thing we should do is do a bit of a test server to check everything runs smooth. If successful we can transfer our current world data to you and the universe will be zen once more.

Heres a bunch o links in case you don't know already :
Minecraft home page
Downloads, the server software is at the bottom. I believe you can run a server without paying for the game (if I'm wrong somebody kick me in the crotch).
A youtube vid on how to setup a Minecraft server. This vid got me through it

Should this work and you be willing to host I'm sure, should there be any fee's incurred, many of us would be glad to chip in (within reason lol, I could feel a request for a new server echoing about the cosmos as soon as I wrote that lol)

Once you have your server installed and running just let us know and post us a link to your external IP. We should be able to connect using that.

Then testing shall begin in earnest

Many many thanks