Install Paper plugins on your Minecraft server

Plugins add features to a Minecraft server without changing the game your players install: land claims, homes and teleports, ranks and permissions, grief rollback, and much more. On SLASHPLAY you install them yourself by uploading the plugin file, then restarting the server. It takes a couple of minutes, and your players don’t need to install anything.

Before you start

• Your server must run Paper. Plugins work on Paper (latest) and Paper 1.21. Vanilla (latest) doesn’t load plugins at all. See Paper or Vanilla?.
• Plugins, not mods. A plugin is a .jar made for Bukkit, Spigot or Paper. Forge, Fabric and NeoForge mods, and modpacks from CurseForge or Modrinth, don’t run on these servers.
• The Control servers permission on the team, to use the file manager and restart. See Roles and permissions.
• The server running, so you can restart it and check the console afterwards.

Find a plugin

Download plugins from their official pages. The big places to look:

• Hangar, run by the Paper team.
• Modrinth (use the Plugins section, not Mods).
• SpigotMC.

On the download page, check two things: that the plugin supports Paper (Bukkit and Spigot plugins usually do), and that it supports your server’s Minecraft version. You get a single .jar file. SLASHPLAY doesn’t review or support third-party plugins, so stick to well-known ones with recent updates.

Steps

1. Click Manage on your server’s card and open Advanced, then Files.

2. Open the plugins folder. It sits in the server’s main folder, next to server.properties and the world folders.

   

3. Click Upload and pick the plugin’s .jar, or drag it onto the file list. You can upload several at once.

   

   

4. Go back to the General tab and click Restart server. The restart takes about 30 seconds, and the address stays the same.

5. Open the Console tab and watch the startup. Each plugin prints a line when it enables. Once the server is up, type plugins and click Send to list the plugins that loaded.

   

Configure a plugin

Most plugins create a folder of their own inside plugins on their first start, such as plugins/EssentialsX/, with a config.yml inside. To change a setting:

1. In Advanced → Files, open the plugin’s folder.
2. Click the config file and choose Edit. Make your change and save.
3. Click Restart server so the plugin reads the new settings.

YAML files are picky about spaces: keep the indentation exactly as it was, and use spaces, not tabs. If a plugin stops loading after an edit, the console usually names the line it didn’t like.

What happens to plugins when you stop

The whole plugins folder, jars and configs, is part of your server’s save on the Paper versions. It’s saved on Save & Stop and comes back on Restore. Plugins count toward your save’s size, which costs 1 token per GB per month. Most plugins are small, but some (maps, logging plugins with big databases) grow over time. See Storage costs.

To remove a plugin, delete its .jar (and its folder, if you don’t want its data) in the file manager, then restart.

Troubleshooting

The plugin doesn’t show up in plugins. Check that the .jar is directly inside plugins, not in a subfolder, and that you restarted afterwards. On a Vanilla server, plugins never load.

The console shows an error for the plugin. Scroll up in the Console tab to the error at startup. The usual causes are a plugin built for a different Minecraft version (download the version that matches your server), a missing dependency (the error names it), or a mod for Forge or Fabric uploaded by mistake.

The server crashes after I added plugins. Big plugin lists need more memory. If the crash box says the server ran out of memory, stop it, pick a bigger size, and restore. Otherwise remove the newest plugin and restart to find the culprit.

The plugin needs its own port. Players connect through the Minecraft address only. Plugins that expect players to open an extra port, like a web map served from the server, may not be reachable.

Related

• The file manager
• Paper or Vanilla?
• Minecraft console commands
• Server sizes
• Edit server.properties
• What’s kept between runs