Case Study

IceLegends SMP

A vanilla-first Romanian Minecraft SMP built for clean 3–4 month seasons.

The Problem

Running a community SMP means balancing plugin depth against vanilla feel, managing a world-reset cycle, and keeping operations simple enough for a solo admin. IceLegends SMP solves this with 11 carefully chosen plugins, strict feature gating per a "vanilla-first" principle, and fully automated backups and world resets.

My Role

Designed, configured, and deployed solo — server architecture, 11-plugin selection and configuration, LuckPerms permission model, economy and nation design, Docker infrastructure, and Cloudflare Tunnel ingress for Dynmap.

Join the Server ↗

Highlights

PaperMC 1.21 on Docker with a hard 11-plugin cap — every plugin is justified and none are redundant
Towny nations with seasonal quests (Quests + Citizens NPCs) and a single manually-spawned MythicMobs boss per season
AureliumSkills passive bonuses only — active abilities disabled to preserve vanilla combat (P-01)
DiscordSRV bridge logs every death, join, and chat event to dedicated Discord channels in real time
Daily automated backups with 7-day retention; resource world resets every Monday at 05:00 via cron

Stack

PaperMC 1.21DockerCloudflare TunnelLuckPermsTownyAureliumSkillsMythicMobsDiscordSRVDynmap

Constraints

Solo admin — every operation must complete in under 10 minutes (P-02).
Vanilla-first (P-01): if any plugin disappeared tomorrow, the game must continue unchanged.
11-plugin hard cap — every addition must displace something or prove unique, irreplaceable value.

System Architecture

Edge

Cloudflare Tunnel (Dynmap web map)

TCP :25565 open (Minecraft clients)

Runtime

Docker + docker-compose

itzg/minecraft-server image

Core

PaperMC 1.21

Vault

LuckPerms

EssentialsX

CoreProtect

Gameplay

Towny

AureliumSkills

ShopGUI+

Quests + Citizens

MythicMobs

Multiverse-Core

Ops

DiscordSRV bridge

Daily backup cron (04:00)

Weekly world reset cron (Mon 05:00)

Key Trade-offs

The decisions worth defending — what I chose, what I turned down, and why.

Plugin count cap

Chose

Hard cap at 11 plugins

Rejected

Unlimited plugin stack

Each plugin is a maintenance surface and a potential conflict point. The cap forces prioritisation and keeps the dependency graph legible for a solo admin.

Public ingress for Dynmap

Chose

Cloudflare Tunnel (no open ports)

Rejected

Expose :8123 directly via UFW

No origin IP exposure, free DDoS protection, and zero firewall rule maintenance — the same pattern used by the IceLegends portfolio site.

AureliumSkills scope

Chose

Passive bonuses only, active abilities disabled

Rejected

Full AureliumSkills feature set including active combat abilities

Active abilities alter vanilla combat — a direct violation of P-01. Passive bonuses reward playtime additively without changing the combat model.

Season lifecycle

Chose

Full world reset every 3–4 months

Rejected

Incremental map expansion with no reset

Resets keep the world fresh, prevent terrain exhaustion, and give every new player an equal start — critical for community health in a small SMP.

What I'd Do Differently

An honest retrospective — the stuff I'd change with more time, more users, or a second pass.

1Add a staging compose stack so plugin updates can be tested before touching the live season — one bad update cost several hours of rollback work.
2Move backup storage off-site from day one; local-only archives are a single hardware failure away from a full season loss.
3Wire Dynmap as a named Docker service rather than relying on the host port, so the Cloudflare Tunnel config survives container IP reassignment on restart.

Technical Deep-Dive

Architecture, specifications, and implementation details.

36 — Votifier + VotingPlugin — Sistem de Voturi

"

Jucătorii votează serverul pe site-uri externe → primesc recompense

#De ce e esențial pentru growth

Voturile pe Planet Minecraft și similar aduc jucători noi organic. E singurul growth hack complet gratuit care funcționează pe termen lung. Un server cu 10 voturi/zi apare pe prima pagină la filtrare după voturi recente.

#Download

Votifier2:    spigotmc.org/resources/votifier.82738  (gratis)
VotingPlugin: spigotmc.org/resources/votingplugin.15358 (gratis)
Dependință:   Vault (pentru recompense coins)

#Site-uri de votat (top liste)

Site	Vizitatori/lună	Frecvență vot
minecraft-mp.com	2M+	24h
planetminecraft.com	5M+	24h
minecraftservers.org	1M+	24h
minecraft-server-list.com	500K	24h
topminecraftservers.org	300K	24h

"

Înregistrezi serverul pe fiecare site → primești un token → pui în Votifier config

#Config Votifier2

# data/plugins/Votifier/config.yml

# Portul pe care Votifier ascultă (diferit de MC!)
port: 8192

# Token generat automat — copiezi pe site-urile de votat
token: "GENERAT_AUTOMAT_LA_PRIMA_PORNIRE"

# Nu expune portul 8192 public — site-urile votează direct
# Adaugă în UFW: ufw allow 8192/tcp

#Config VotingPlugin

# data/plugins/VotingPlugin/config.yml

# Recompense per vot
vote-rewards:
  default:
    commands:
      - "eco give {player} 300"           # 300 coins per vot
      - "broadcast &a[Vote] &7{player} a votat pentru server! &a+300⛃"
      - "give {player} experience_bottle 5"

# Streak rewards — bonus pentru voturi consecutive
vote-streaks:
  7:    # 7 zile la rând
    commands:
      - "eco give {player} 1000"
      - "broadcast &6[Vote Streak] &7{player} a votat &67 zile la rând! &6+1000⛃"
      - "give {player} diamond 3"

  30:   # 30 zile la rând
    commands:
      - "eco give {player} 5000"
      - "lp user {player} meta setprefix '[Votant Legendar] '"
      - "broadcast &d[Vote Legend] &7{player} &d30 ZILE LA RÂND! &d+5000⛃"

# Reminder dacă nu ai votat azi
vote-reminder:
  enabled: true
  interval: 120   # minute
  message: "&7[Vote] Votează pentru server și primești &a300⛃&7! &fplanetminecraft.com/server/serverultau"

# Leaderboard lunar
monthly-top-voters:
  enabled: true
  reset-day: 1    # prima zi din lună
  rewards:
    1st:
      - "eco give {player} 10000"
      - "broadcast &6TOP VOTER LUNA ACEASTA: {player}!"
    2nd:
      - "eco give {player} 5000"
    3rd:
      - "eco give {player} 2500"

#Comenzi jucători

/vote              # Afișează linkurile de vot
/vote check        # Verifică dacă ai votat azi
/vote streak       # Streak-ul tău curent
/vote top          # Top votanți luna aceasta

#Hologramă la spawn (DecentHolograms)

/dh create vote-board
/dh addline vote-board "&a&l🗳 Top Votanți Luna Aceasta"
/dh addline vote-board "&71. {voting_top_1_name}: {voting_top_1_votes} voturi"
/dh addline vote-board "&72. {voting_top_2_name}: {voting_top_2_votes} voturi"
/dh addline vote-board "&73. {voting_top_3_name}: {voting_top_3_votes} voturi"
/dh addline vote-board "&7&oVotează: /vote"

#Setup pe site-uri — procedură

1. Te înregistrezi pe planetminecraft.com
2. "Add server" → completezi IP, port, descriere, screenshots
3. Mergi la "Vote settings" → copiezi Server IP și Port (8192)
4. Pui în Votifier config.yml
5. Testezi cu /testvote
6. Repeți pentru fiecare site din tabel

#UFW — deschide portul Votifier

sudo ufw allow 8192/tcp comment 'Votifier'
sudo ufw reload

#Related Documents

Economy (recompense echilibrate) → 03_economy_design.md
Discord (anunț vot) → 10_discord_integration.md
Leaderboards → 20_plan_analytics.md

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