Vanilla :

The original, intact and unmodified Minecraft server software created and distributed directly by Mojang. Due to a few bugs, poor optimization and a lack of configuration, the Vanilla server is fairly criticized and not recommended despite its official nature.

CraftBukkit :

The CraftBukkit server is based on the Bukkit API. This API adds additional functionality to an official Minecraft server such as new orders, an economic system, multiple worlds, etc. These functionalities are added to your server in the form of plugins, developed in Java by developers or users. Bukkit then allows you to link these plugins to your Minecraft server.

Spigot :

Spigot is probably the most popular Minecraft server software. This is a modified version of CraftBukkit with hundreds of improvements and optimizations.

After creating your server, the first thing you will want to do is become an administrator (OP).

1. To do this, first connect to the lobby and then to the game server with your Minecraft account.
2. Now open the command prompt from the lobby options: Options>Persistent server>Execute a command
3. In the command prompt window, enter the command "op yourPseudo" then validate.
4. You are now a server administrator and can use all the commands authorized by your new privileges directly from the game chat: https://bukkit.gamepedia.com/CraftBukkit_Commands

This file allows you to customize the help displayed to players who enter the /help command. Some plugins however offer a more ergonomic interface to do the same.

This file contains the list of permissions you grant to a player. A permission corresponds to access to a certain functionality of a plugin. For example, imagine that the creator of a plugin for typing the /test command wants this command to be executed only by players with test.use permission. In this case it is necessary to add to the player this permission so that he can make this command. Unless of course he is OP, which would automatically give him all the permissions of all plugins at that time.

Sometimes, this file does not work for various reasons (either it is not taken into account, or all the permissions are not granted to the corresponding players, etc.). This is why it is advisable to use plugins specially designed to manage the permissions to be granted to players such as PermissionsEX or GroupManager.

You just need to go to the CurseForge website, choose the plugin you want, download it (it's a .jar) and put it in the folder /plugins of your server which is located in the same place as the folders of your worlds. Then, you must restart your server so that it takes into account this plugin and also creates the folders allowing to configure this plugin.

To configure a plugin, after restarting your server, go to the /plugins folder and then to the /plugin_name folder. Then you should be able to configure your plugin. It is impossible to explain in detail the configuration of a plugin because each plugin has a different configuration. It is therefore preferable to read on the BukkitDev page of the plugin all the information necessary to understand and modify it.

Certain plugins are really essential for your server.

Essentials:

This plugin allows you to add many features such as adding color in the chat and more than 100 commands that allow for example to imprison players or to reveal creatures.

PermissionsEx:

This plugin allows you to manage the permissions you want to grant to a player or a group to which a player can belong. It is preferable to use this plugin instead of the permissions.yml file mentioned above.

When a server update is available, you are notified directly from the lobby activity logs.

To update your server, you will first need to create a new dedicated server on RomStation. Your new server will indeed be created by default in its most recent version.

Then all you need to do is import the data from your old server. So start by stopping your two servers from the lobby options: Options>Persistent server>Stop the server

From the old server lobby, open the file manager (FTP client): Options>Persistent server>Open the file manager

In FileZilla, copy locally this directory "/minecraft/world". From the new server lobby, open the file manager to transfer the previously copied directory. If you customized the "/minecraft/server.properties" file, manually reproduce your changes.

Also remember to copy any plugins and other modules if they remain compatible with the new version. But you will more likely have to wait for individual updates from their respective developers before considering an import.

Make sure that the data are correctly transferred before removing the obsolete server. And don't forget to restart the stopped server.