MCFun Central - Creative Plots is Back! + Problems with GoDaddy

Hi guys,
Once again, it's Matt, the owner of MCFun Central (you can't be more surprised).
It's been a while since a post was made on this blog, so I thought I'd update all 0 of you reading this blog about what's going on.

First off, if you've been on the server recently, you've noticed that I had a lot of problems with Creative Plots recently. One of them was just a stupid not paying attention jar thing on my part, but the other was a little more serious:
I guess I could say what it is, now that it's resolved. If you didn't know, from the start of Creative Plots on MCFun Central, you weren't allowed to use certain things (like lava, water, maybe tnt (I forgot), spawn eggs, etc.). However, if you put those things in a dispenser or a dropper, it would dispense the item out.
Because of this, we had major lag (in the 0 fps sense) in the Creative Plots world and ghasts flying everywhere. It took a while to get rid of the ghasts. However, this made me realize the serious problem that was developing in Creative Plots. Last evening, I went through some config files until I found the blacklist part of Essentials. You are now not permitted to use spawn eggs of any kind, dispensers, or droppers. I'm sorry if you were planning to make some amazing redstone creation or something with the containers, but it's just to keep out the rule abuse.

Onto the second, more frustrating problem.

As you know, back in the beginning of June, I purchased the domain mcfuncentral.com from GoDaddy. Here's a little word of advice: if you want to purchase a domain from GoDaddy, don't purchase it when you're on vacation.
Just yesterday, I finally got my account unlocked. They deleted my domain, but they refunded it and told me it was up for repurchase. When I got back into my account and tried to repurchase it, it told me it wasn't available. I tried asking a Live Chat support if sometroll else bought my domain or if it was just a glitch on their part. Because of "technical difficulties", they couldn't get my account details.











sigh

MCFun Central - Domain Change DATE + Staff Changes

Hey guys,
It's Matt, the owner of MCFun Central.

First off, I've finally got a (estimated) date for when MCFun Central will be mcfuncentral.com!
So, what's been happening to the domain for the last two weeks?
As I mentioned in the last post, since I'm in Romania right now and I'm using my mom's credentials to purchase the domain, GoDaddy thinks I'm a Romanian hacker who obtained my mom's personal information. Keep in mind that she's not here, so that makes it even worse (yes, I was sent to Romania alone as an unaccompanied minor). It makes sense. My mom is using the card online at home, at the grocery store, restaurants, etc. etc. and all of a sudden someone's using the same card to buy something from Romania. While this is really frustrating for me, I'm still happy all these sites (it's not just GoDaddy, Beatport is actually the only site that doesn't) take these extra security measures. Nevertheless, because of this, I will not be able to purchase anything until I arrive back in America, and even then I have to go through all the identity solving crap that I started here. The flight back is on July 7th, separated into one two-hour flight and one eight-hour flight with waiting in between, so I probably won't be back until July 8th. Then I have to get used to the jet lag. Luckily, the way back to America is easier than coming to Romania, so I'll just sleep for 14 hours and I'll be good. Then I have to resubmit the identity and call GoDaddy. It's a lot to do, and it mostly involves my personal life. With all of this, I don't think we'll get the domain until July 11-12th. We're also having problems with our sub-domain after we purchased the Dedicated IP, but that shouldn't be too long to be fixed. For now the only IP to connect to MCFun Central is 23.235.224.10 . I know, it sucks, but we'll get it, and it's the first step to making MCFun Central the best it can be!

Aside from all the problems, we've got some great news too! Shannon (stan5370) has become an admin instead of a moderator, and he definitely deserves to be an admin! He has experience with programming and we are sure he will help in the new MCFun Central!

Daniel has also moved up from the Admin rank, and has taken The5Llamas's place in Co-Owner! Daniel is the co-founder of the MCFun Servers, so why should he not be the Co-Owner of MCFun Central?

If you have any suggestions, questions, or comments about the MCFun Servers, leave us a comment! We read all of our comments and try our best to do what others want for MCFun Servers!


I'll keep you posted on everything!

~ Matt

MCFun Central - More Domain Change News

MCFun Central has just received a dedicated IP from MCProHosting. This means our sub-domain no longer exists, and you will have to connect via 23.235.224.10 (no port) for a few days until we finish changing our domain.

As I said before in the last post, we are working to get an actual domain from GoDaddy and implement it to our server so that instead of using an MCProHosting sub-domain or a long IP, you would be able to connect via mcfuncentral.com or mc.mcfuncentral.com. However, I am currently in Romania, and I bought the domain with American information. Because of this, GoDaddy is taking extra security measures and asking for a photo of our identification and a picture of our credit card, just to make sure I'm not a Romanian hacker who got access to our identification.

As I said in the first sentence, we have received our Dedicated IP from MCProHosting. Right now, this means good news and bad news: the good news is it is the first step into connecting to MCFun Central via mcfuncentral.com. If we had not purchased a Dedicated IP, you would have to connect via mcfuncentral.com:25576. A Dedicated IP removes the server's port. The bad news about this is since GoDaddy is taking these extra security measures and my GoDaddy account is currently locked, you will have to connect via 23.235.224.10 (with no port) for a few days until we provide proper identification and the account is unlocked. Even then, we still have to wait approximately 24 hours for them to check the identification, and then we still have to wait another 48 hours for the domain change to take place. Man, domain changes are hard. Here's a tip: if you're going to change your server domain to a domain from GoDaddy (or any domain-selling company, for that matter), make sure you're not on vacation out of your country, and make sure you don't do it as your server is starting to rise.

I'll make another post when our domain has finally taken place, and when you will finally be able to connect via mcfuncentral.com. Thanks for reading this post, and thanks for playing on the MCFun Servers!

~ Matt

MCFun Central - Domain Changes

Hey everynone.
It's Matt, the owner of MCFun Central.

While MCFun Central is back up, we are going through a long and difficult process of changing our IP so that you wouldn't have to connect with 23.235.224.10:25576. It's true that we do have a subdomain for that, but I feel it would be easier to connect via mcfuncentral.com instead of mcfuncentral.mcpro.co. I like advertising MCProHosting, since they are definitely worthy of being on highway billboards, but as MCFun Central is growing, I would like to have an actual domain so that it looks more professional and doesn't appear to newcomers that we are noobs that are clinging on to MCProHosting. Long story short, we want our domain to be more independent and professional as the server itself is becoming more independent and professional. More news about this will come as we finish getting the IP.

Because of these domain changes, you may or may not have trouble connecting to the server. If you do, the server isn't down, it's just the domain change taking place. I've never done a domain change before, but I expect it to last an hour or two, maybe even less, if you are having trouble connecting to the server.

Thank you everyone who still reads this blog for being a great player on the MCFun servers! We have a lot more things planned for 2014, so keep reading for more info on the MCFun Servers!

~ Matt

MCFun Central is Back Up!

Most problems that occur to any small server like MCFun Central are just little tiny stupid hidden problems that I can't figure out for a month. Take the permissions file, for example. I spent 2 days straight, only taking breaks for sleeping, eating, drinking, and "potty breaks" trying to figure out why admins couldn't edit the full world. In the end, all I had to do was change 1 number in the Server Settings file. Today, all I had to do was update the server jar from 1.7.2 to 1.7.9, which now has a beta build. The plugins that I had updated were updated for optimal 1.7.9 use, so they didn't work on the 1.7.2 jar. All major problems and concerns that I had about the server are all wiped away. Horray for my crappy eyesight skills!

Join now! mcfuncentral.mcpro.co

~ Matt

MCFun Central Currently Down!

Hey guys,
This is Matt, the owner of MCFun Central. Since I've been inactive on Minecraft recently and haven't been paying attention to my server, some major things are going wrong involving permissions. I don't really want to go in depth of the specific problems that are going on, but I will say they are major enough to have to shut the server down or whitelist it until we troubleshoot and fix these issues.

There are some people who play on MCFun Central fairly frequently, and I'd like to give my sincere apologies for you. I am on summer vacation, so I will have time to figure out what the hell is going on with the server. I'm also visiting my aunt who is a computer scientist/programmer, so I can have a little help from her.
I promise I will have the server back up as soon as possible. In the meantime, if you have a lot of experience with Minecraft servers and are willing to help me out a little, please don't hesitate to send me a Personal Message on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/TechBug2012/about).

Sorry about this!

~Matt

Griefers + Updates - Servers "Down"

While we at the MCFun Servers have been focusing on our standardized testing for school and other interests non Minecraft-related, the MCFun Servers were almost like a thing of the past. This past month, we haven't really been working on our servers that much, and we noticed a significant player drop from our servers as well. So what happened while we were semi-gone?

First off, you may or may not have heard of Heartbleed, a hack that exposed critical security information, such as login information and credit cards, on about 2/3 of the web. Here's part of Mojang's post about it:

Two days ago a serious vulnerability (that’s been named “Heartbleed”) in the popular cryptographic software OpenSSL was made public. This weakness could potentially be exploited to steal information, such as login information, that normally would be protected by encryption. This software is used by roughly two thirds of the internet so a lot of services were or are at risk of being affected.

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I think Minecraft made an update or two to prevent Heartbleed from taking the security information from them, in addition to the name-changing updates. So now, with 1.7.9 out and all our servers on 1.7.2 (and one private one on 1.7.5), our servers are currently "down".

Yes, I know, Bukkit HAS released a jar for 1.7.8 (which also includes support for 1.7.9). However, it is still a development build, which means it's UNSTABLE AND UNSUPPORTED, as it says when you look at it:

I don't know about Daniel and his server jar, but MCFun Central runs a lot of worlds and plugins, and I don't want all of our plugins to break because of a Minecraft update. Some of you may know MCFun Central isn't exactly the most stable server out there, even with a more stable Bukkit jar. Therefore, MCFun Central and possibly the other MCFun Servers will not be available for users on 1.7.9 until the beta version is released or until 1.8 is released. To play on the servers, you will need to switch your client to 1.7.2-1.7.5.

There are advantages and disadvantages to being gone from our servers. One of the disadvantages for us is that we don't know whether or not someone's managed to grief our servers.

Today, I received an email from our Co-Owner, sharpdomino (some of you know her as Carmen). Here's a screenshot of the email:

You may have to zoom in on the picture a little bit to see it better, but the griefer not only turned all the ground to lava, but also spawned a bunch of NPCs of our admin, captainfreedster, everywhere, and screwed up the letters and the portals (you can clearly see it in the random redstone blocks that used to spell "Redstone Rebel").

Carmen was wrong, however. Using the awesome and highly useful CoreProtect plugin, which I highly recommend to quickly find out the whodunit and to automatically undo the griefs, I first found that it was two of our highly respected admins, ironhaan and pikmin822 (Xander and Jack). I was surprised, but I'll get to that later. I used CoreProtect to FULLY RESTORE the spawn. Come see for yourself. I don't want to turn this into an advertisement for CoreProtect, but I think everyone should have this plugin on their server, whether or not they are having problems with griefing on their servers.

I wasn't that surprised to find that Jack did it. He had griefed MCFun Central as much as 6 times since the server opened (12/10/2013) just out of rage or boredom, and always asked for a second chance.

I was surprised to find out that Xander had helped him, though. Xander was one of most respected admins not only on MCFun Central, but on MCFun Servers as a whole. I haven't talked to Xander about it yet, since the email was sent last night (but I didn't read it until today), but I'll talk to him and hopefully update you on what happened.

Wow, that was a long post. If you read through all of that, then thank you, because that took really long to type =P

Be on the lookout for more MCFun Server posts! Thanks, and have a great day!