Recently my brother Simeon started a Minecraft survival multiplayer server. We had previously hosted a server, but this time we hosted it on the official Minecraft servers, which they offer for a price of $7 at the regular option, but one major difference from using a 3rd p[arty hosting service is that there is barely any configuration for plugins and mods, etc. The main reason is because of the server running on plain Vanilla Minecraft. But I did some research and found that I could add data packs to the realm by creating the world first in singleplayer, then loading the data pack, and then when you upload the world to the realm, it keeps the data pack. The data pack I used is a Multiplayer Sleep data pack (link here.) This is an amazing alternative to plugins (although I prefer plugins over data packs) but if you have a realm, this will definitely help replace the need for plugins
Recently I had paid for a Minecraft hosting service called Apex. A hosting service is a company that hosts a Minecraft server on their desktop computer. When you buy a service for a server, you can choose different types. For example, I chose the 2GB server because I am only going to use it for a plain survival world. If you wanted a server for a ton of plugins (plugins change the game to whatever they are supposed to do, for example, this is a plugin that makes it, so only one person has to go to bed instead of everyone who is on the server go to bed.) Then you would probably want to buy the 3GB or the 4GB if you will have a lot of people. The reason I had purchased the server is that I wanted to play on it with some friends on the server instead of a realm that I was playing on because there were about 11 of us, and the realm could only hold ten players, but the server can hold about thirty players.
Back in February, I had tried to make an online Minecraft Java server (what is Java Minecraft? Here is a post about Java Minecraft and windows 10 edition Minecraft) so that all of our friends could all join on to the same Minecraft world. Because usually, you have to pay about 10$ a month for a hosted Server that your friends can join. The reason most people pay for a service is that they will handle all of the technical stuff and leave you with just telling them what you want on it, and they will host it onto their desktop computers, so you have no risk. But I wanted to try starting a small Minecraft server that is hosted on my laptop. Still, when I got everything set up and ready to go, then I ran into a problem I needed to set up Port Forward for my Minecraft Server for me to make it open to the world, the problem was that I couldn't find out how to port forward my server and eventually, I gave up. Then about two weeks ago, I was looking at my files to figure what to keep and what to delete. That is when I saw the folder with my server that I downloaded back in February. I decided to run it and see if it still works, it worked, after that I tried to join the server on a different computer, and I was able to join the world! But I still had the problem of port forwarding. Port forwarding is where you have to go under your router settings and connect a virtual link from your computer to the router then onto the internet. So then I looked up a tutorial video on how to port forward a Minecraft server, and I found one by a youtube channel called the breakdown. I followed the instructions on the video and was able to get my server up and running so that anybody can join. The reason I couldn't port forward my server earlier is that there weren't any good tutorial videos about port forwarding.