The Origin
It started with
a scheduling problem.
I was 10. My friends and I wanted to play Minecraft together but we all had different schedules, so someone always had to be online and hosting. That got old fast. I asked my dad, an IT professional, how to run a dedicated server so we could play whenever we wanted.
That one question turned into three years of learning. Static IPs, port forwarding, proxy routing, plugin development, Discord bots. By the time I was 13 the server had 80+ registered members and 20+ daily active players.
The Growth
One server turned into
a community.
When I got the Java edition just before turning 11, it opened up more capabilities and more problems. Cross-platform compatibility, multiple server instances, players needing to move between lobbies and game modes. I deployed BungeeCord to handle all of it from a single entry point.
By 12 I was writing custom plugins in Java and had built a Discord bot that mirrored in-game chat, relayed console output, and let admins run server commands without ever touching the machine directly. The community peaked at 80+ members. It's smaller now — mostly just friends — but the server is still up in 2026. When people want to spin one up, they know who to ask.
# BungeeCord config.yml — server routing
listeners:
- host: 0.0.0.0:25565
max_players: 100
tab_list: GLOBAL_PING
servers:
lobby:
address: localhost:25566
survival:
address: localhost:25567
creative:
address: localhost:25568
# Static IP + port forwarded on router for public access
Technical Breakdown
What was actually
built.
- Configured a static IP and set up port forwarding on the home router for public server access.
- Deployed BungeeCord as a proxy to route players across multiple server instances: lobby, survival, and creative all on the different machines.
- Wrote Java plugins and patched incompatibilities between third-party plugins that didn't work together out of the box.
- Built a Discord bot that bridged in-game chat to a Discord channel, relayed server console output, and let admins run commands remotely without server access.
- Moderated and managed an 80+ member community player disputes, uptime, rules, the whole thing.
Timeline