Minecraft is best played with friends, and using Bukkit as a Minecraft server has many advantages over the vanilla server you can start through your client. First of you have about 13 000 different Bukkit plugins to customize your server as you see fit. If you’re new to Bukkit or it’s plugins it can be really hard to know what you need or even want to have on your server – I know I was confused and had to spend many hours looking through reviews and watching YouTube videos to find what would fit me and my friends needs.

Essentials

It’s name is really descriptive of what it is, this plugin is the absolute essentials every server needs – I have not seen any server that does not have this plugin on their server. It gives you a lot of commands and features you never wanna be without.

Features

• Player made homes, and server warps.
• Player kits and first join kits
• Easy player to player teleports, including teleport requests.
• Full chat and nickname customization
• Full moderator control, with feature such as muting, jailing and temp banning
• Economy support, including shop signs and command costs
• Full permission based build control, with the ability to block certain items
• Core world protection, allowing you to block explosions, fire spread and other catastrophes!

As you can tell by the feature list provided from the official Essentials info page at Curse.com. Download Essentials here now and try it out! It would take me way to long to try to explain why this is one of the greatest plugins out there, but just a few commands that helps  out a lot are the /day command and the /i diamond command to easily give yourself or other players items ingame, and the fact that it has Economy support is a great way to give your players something extra to strive for.

PermissionsBukkit

If you’re going to have plugins on your Bukkit server, which you really do want to have. You will need to be able to set permissions so that your plugins work correctly, this plugin is really easy to get started with and it does not demand much from your part to setup.

Features

• Storage of users and groups in plugins/PermissionsBukkit/config.yml.
• Both users and groups can be assigned individual permissions and parent groups to inherit permissions from.
• Support for global and per-world permissions.
• Reload configuration from file without reloading the plugin.
• Ability to check if a player has a specific permission node.
• Ability to dump all permissions a player has and the plugins that set them.
• Ability to print plugin, description, and default for a given permission node.
• Ability to modify the permissions of groups and users and the groups of a user in-game.
• Built-in antibuild via the “permissions.build” node (defaults to allowing anyone to build).

By default there already is a permissions file with your Bukkit server, but I found that this was much easier and more practical – there are dozens of this kind of plugin out there but I would recommend to at least try this one out by downloading it and following the instructions.

WorldEdit

This is a really great plugin for server administrators, it allows you to build with the help of command line, with great tools to let you quickly create awesome creations without having to place every block, this is just a few of many applications of this plugin. But my absolute favorite feature must be the ability to save builds into schematics and move it to another server.

Features

• Fix griefing and other issues without shutting down your server
• Quickly create, replace or delete thousands of blocks in seconds
• Level an entire mountain and replace it with natural looking terrain
• Use hand-bound tools and brushes to quickly make changes
• Generate spheres, cylinders, cuboids, forests, pumpkin patches, and snowy areas
• Use your compass to quickly teleport to areas by left clicking or using /jumpto
• Choose an area and have it instantly restored from backups
• Copy areas, paste them, load them, and save them as .schematics

Above list is taken from WorldEdit’s info page and I would highly recommend this plugin for server admins it will help with every day tasks quickly, you can download WorldEdit and try it out yourself.

DynMap

I always get lost, and I always have trouble with deciding where to build my home. There is maps in Minecraft but they are not easy to read and very limited, but with this plugin your Minecraft world gets rendered into a dynamic map that everyone can access from any web browser, this plugin is a must have for even the smallest Minecraft servers.

Features

• Highly configurable maps per world
• Real-time updates: maps are kept in sync with your world in real-time, updates are shown while your leave your browser open
• Players with their faces are visible on the map
• Chat messages are visible (as balloons or in a chatbox) on the map.
• Map viewers can chat to players in-game.
• Current Minecraft time is visible on the map.
• Current Minecraft weather is visible on the map.
• WorldGuard, Residence, Towny and Factions regions that can be visible on the map (through corresponding Dynmap-* plugins)
• Overall highly configurable and customizable.

In just a few minutes you’ve setup this plugin and it will start to render your Minecraft world, and it’s accessible from http://:8123/. Visit their curse.com page and download DynMap now!

CraftBook

This Bukkit plugin gives you a lot of new mechanics that you didn’t know you needed until you’ve tried them, this is one of the first plugins I download when I start a new Minecraft server. My favorite mechanics that CraftBook implements are Gates that is controlled by redstone, giving you the ability to have bigger and cooler looking doors, and another of my favorites is the Bridge mechanic and is something I use a lot. This Bridge mechanic gives the players contractible bridges. When I build houses that use high ceiling, or when I’m building my house on top of a mountain – ladders can be tedious and CraftBook has a great solution for this. This Mechanic is an Elevator where you just place two signs, one above the other, giving you the ability to quickly teleport straight up.

Features

• Modular, and extremely light on your server.
• Enable features that you need, disable ones that you don’t. Even tweak features to your liking.
• Adds heaps of mechanics that allow you to mimic large portions of FTB/Tekkit with a vanilla client.
• Redstone ICs (Logic gates, Sensors, Many others)
• Elevators for your server so people can jump between floors quickly. (Or smoothly, if you choose so)
• Working cauldrons so players can cook inside them.
• Your own custom crafting recipes.
• Hidden switches for players.
• Togglable areas and bridges.
• Chairs you can sit on.
• Working pipes that can transfer items from place to place.
• Footprints where your players walk.
• Mobs and players drop their heads.
• The ability to bind commands to items, with cool-downs, permissions and timers.
• And much more… (Seriously, check the wiki)

I mentioned only a few of the many mechanics this plugin has to offer, and as you can see from the feature list from their info page – you really need to try it out to see how amazing this plugin actually is, and you can enable or disable the mechanics you do not want to use. Download CraftBook and put it in your plugins folder and try it out for yourself!

MobArena

When you and your friends want to take a break from the endless mining and the endless building projects, why not enjoy yourself and fight as a gladiator with your friends using the great and highly customizable MobArena plugin. Build your own arenas and define what monsters you want to spawn each wave, what classes and gear your players may use and so much more! It’s easy to get started and you can edit every aspect of every arena you build.

Features

• Fight oncoming waves of monsters!
• Play on your own, or team up with friends!
• Earn glorious prizes!
• Build your own arena!
• Completely customizable classes, waves and rewards!
• Easy to set up!
• Extremely easy to use!
• Very few user commands!
• Uses Vault for permissions and economies!

I found this plugin being very popular amongst my friends, there are many Hunger Games types of plugins out there but the ease of use and the ability to customize everything from a .yml file made this a obvious choice. It even comes with an example arena you can easily put out and start playing around with, and you’ll quickly learn how to master this plugin – download it now and try it out for yourself and see what I mean.

This list is just a few of the many bukkit plugins that you would like to install, but it’s a good start and these are regularly updated to keep up with the Minecraft versions, which usually is the biggest problem with other plugins. If you have suggestions of more great plugins comment below this article and I’ll add it to the list.