Spawn ===== It is traditional for new players into the game to spawn in front of a board of rules. Spelling errors make me want to hit my head on the desk and smileys are straight up unprofessional. Consistent but diverse. Keep the same colour scheme whilst changing the architecture to suit the purpose of a building. Don't put a wizard tower next to a skyscraper, unless you're going for the "lost" look, it looks out of place. I don't like the idea of spawn as an inescapable hub with teleporters, it should lead out into the outside world and be quite small and unobtrusive. Players often despise spawn, with its restrictive protections and overall static look. Try to make players engage actively in spawn's development and possibly give out houses in spawn. Doing this too often may result in a spawn clogged up with unused houses. Stress to the players that a house in spawn is a privilege not a right. Too much in spawn is also a worry. I tend to quit if my little computer can't handle it. It should be a few buildings, nodeboxes for decoration. Things like shingles and slopes affect the performance a lot and should be avoided. Doors in spawn should be used for a reason. New players don't want to open doors. Try leaving the doors off the spawn buildings, some people experience lag and therefore frustration trying to get into a building with doors. This is especially annoying if the admin doesn't realise that their protection mod forbids anyone to interact with doors. The area around spawn is equally as important as spawn itself. If you have lots of griefing around spawn, people might have a hard time leaving it. Possibly look into both roads out of spawn and teleporters out. The teleporters could take you to a random place. A rough entry to the map isn't usually a good thing. If someone walks away from where they spawned and see massive skyscrapers. What do they do? Where do they go? Make it clear where spawn is, and where it ends. Have skilled players make houses just outside of spawn to encourage less skilled players to try as well. Try to have a single protection area covering all of spawn. Yes, spawn should ideally be a square/rectangle with a clear block outline. Don't have massive empty buildings. Snug, small and utilised is better than big, ugly and empty. Unknown objects are a no-go for spawn. Personally I like a flat spawn. This can be achieved by setting mg_flags to flat, generating some land, then putting it back. This makes the Minetest engine generate smooth transitions between flat and non-flat land. You can do manual landscaping (not terraforming) but this requires quite a lot of work and experience. Don't be pressured into making spawn at (0, 0, 0). If that's underground or in the air, make spawn a bit lower. Signs with text on them are easier to read, such as ones from signs_lib. I never said this, but if you're getting problems with noobs, make it harder to get into the server. Make spawn a maze which people of only good intelligence can complete. Perhaps try a quiz too. Street names are quite important, if you were the founder of a town I doubt all the streets would be nameless. Take some time and label spawn with some creative names. Mods ==== A good choice of mods arguably has a very large pull factor. If you spend time making some mods, they'll be personalised for the server and they'll work good with it. It's often good to write any mods after making the map. Don't get carried away with admin tools, don't try to make yourself the all powerful admin, trust me, you're not. A rules screen on log on is a nice feature to have, just make sure that players who have already read it don't see it again. A "type /rules" in the motd works OK but it's nicer to have an unavoidable rules screen. Home setting mods are a must, be it command based or visual. Losing one's home is extremely irritating. I would suggest for the command based approach, and perhaps a wiki in spawn on how to use it. I find signs work great but a wiki block from the mod of the same name should do great. Adding a big mod? Why? Think about adding some of the larger mods to your server, and strip them down if possible. Lots of large mods like homedecor and mesecons is just asking for lag/too many blocks to manage sanely. Too many blocks brings rise to inconsistent design "Now where was that block I used? Oh never mind this'll do". If you add a mod, stick with it. Unknown blocks are bad. Admin ===== Internationalisation - rules in different languages. A multilingual administrator is a useful asset. Try good cop bad cop. Be polite to your players, there's nothing worse than a rude admin. Type grammatically correct sentences, don't make any typing errors. Be able to smoothly handle more than one issue at once. Don't make anyone feel like you're not listening to them. A welcoming admin is a great thing. To join and have the admin greet you. This makes the user feel comfortable and more likely to stay. Don't make things awkward, always be the one to start a conversation. Know your limits. Don't be an overly strict admin but preserve peace and order where possible. Server ====== Invest in a decent sized box for your Minetest server. It's really worth compiling LuaJIT and LevelDB to make Minetest just that little bit quicker. If you have a bad box, you're likely to have a bad Minetest server. Go ahead and give it your best box. Programs nowadays such as mail servers, mumble servers and ZNCs are very light on the CPU. You may as well dedicate a good server to Minetest to attract players. If you're going to do it, you have to do it seriously. Don't host a server on a home connection. Ever. Take some time to choose a domain for your server. A service such as FreeDNS can be of great help here. Don't go with one of the suggestions. Go ahead and browse the registry for a nice domain you like. Consider the in-game mechanics. If the fast speed is quite slow, perhaps bump it up a notch. My fast speed is 30. There's nothing worse than walking slowly to get somewhere. If you're trying to make movement seem realistic, you can instantly forget it. It's a world made of cubes, it doesn't get less realistic than this. Set the remote_media option in minetest.conf and host the media files somewhere. I tend to use nginx and host them on the same box, I set nginx to serve it directly from the user's home directory (~/media) so I can just run a shell script to generate new cache files. ARM servers had a time and place, they're just not cool anymore. It shows that you aren't committed to the server and might terminate it at any time. Why should I build on a server that could collapse at any time? Players ======= I found the intelligent chat going on a pull factor. Possibly look into encouraging your players to talk about smart things. There's not really much I can say about players, the factors described above should help you get them and keep them.