[Major Plugin Request] Towny

Quote from Roman

Not the plugin has to fulfull technical requirements, the platform where it gets distributed over has to.

I will describe the topic a bit more in detail here, so I can quote it everytime someone asks this again. (And it gets asked very very often.)

I try not to use too many technical terms here and explain it so that no techies understand it.

So if someone should read this here who is from the technical field and throws his hands up in horror because I reference a HTML parser as a translation tool, then forgive me.

I will talk about addons in the following. addons are in our terminology mods and plugins.

We don't manage addons manually. This happens all automatically.

With the incredible amount of addons it would not be possible to maintain them manually.

For this to happen automatically we need to get the information about addons (descriptions, downloads, compatible versions etc.) from somewhere.

The best places to do this are the big platforms on which the addon creators themselves distribute their mods and maintain the necessary information -> spigotmc, curseforge etc.

However, in order for our website to be able to read, associate and understand the information about addons provided on these platforms, they must not only be available as a simple website, but also in a format that "can be read by computers".

Here one speaks of so-called APIs, these provide, quite rudimentarily and simply explained, the information which can be found on a website in computer language.

The only platform that provides an API itself is songoda.

For the other platforms either we had to develop translation tools ourselves or use external tools.

dev.bukkit.org / curseforge: https://github.com/aternosorg/curseforge-api

(dev.bukkit.org is owned by curseforge, therefore they can use the same)

spigotmc.org: https://spiget.org/

Via these APIs we get all information about the addons

- Title

- Descriptions

- Downloads

- Compatible versions

And everything else that is necessary for everything to work smoothly but not directly visible to our users.

This has for us the advantage that we have regarding addons virtually no work.

The information for many thousands of addons is not maintained by us but by those who have developed the respective addons. Since they often have an interest in the information being correct and only need to maintain their own plugins, the quality of the data is very high.

Simply said, it is very rare that there are errors in the plugin information.

If a developer releases an update for an addon, it is already available on our platform within a few hours.

Not every addon that is available on the included platforms is also available on Aternos.

There are several reasons for this, which I will not go into here.

This is also the reason why you have to ask for addons here in the forum.

Furthermore, this automated processing is connected with a high development effort and maintenance. Therefore software code must be written, tested and maintained.

In the case of dev.bukkit or curseforge we even have to write our own APis.

Therefore the platform must have a certain size or offer other advantages for our users, so that the effort is worthwhile.

I have now mentioned the technical requirements.

There are also other criterions which we put on a platform, size, publicity, public appearance/opinion etc.

These exclude platforms such as 9minecraft. But that is another topic.

Now you have a rough idea of what a platform needs to do in order for us to connect it.

Paid plugins

As the name says, paid plugins must be purchased.

We cannot buy one or more plugins for each of our users.

If we wanted to offer paid plugins, we would have to negotiate special conditions with each developer to make it financially feasible or a partnership.

We would also have to connect each plugin separately with its own API, because we wouldn't have the possibility to do that with spigotmc platform.

If you have bought a plugin on spigotmc yourself, we can't add it either, because we can't access the download.

But then there is songoda:

We've been working with songoda since last year.

We're in contact with the operators of songoda - they have the technical requirements that the platform has to overcome to offer paid plugins and to adapt to our needs.

Furthermore, songoda mediates between us and the plugin developers. So we can offer some (not all) paid plugins from songoda.

External Site

If a plugin on spigotmc.org has "External Site" in the download button, we usually cannot add it.

This is because the download for the plugin itself is located on an external site.

These external sites have nothing to do with the platform spigotmc.org, so our addon browser will not find the download at all.

Some plugins which have the download on an external site we can still add. In this case the external site meets certain technical requirements. Which ones are in detail would go beyond the scope of this post.

Github / Jenkins

Some plugins are distributed over platforms like Github or Jenkins.

Yes, both have APIs and would be implementable from this point of view.

However, neither of them are designed directly for Minecraft. Information like compatibilities, dependencies etc. cannot be queried automatically. Therefore we cannot add them.

This information may be on the relevant websites, but is not available in such a way that it can be processed automatically.

This means that we could not even develop a "translation tool" here, such as for curseforge.

Minecraft Forums / Planet Minecraft

The same applies here as for Github/Jenkins.

The only difference is that these pages do not have APIs at all.

mods/plugins from custom sites (GalacticCraft, Pixelmon Generations, GeyserMC)

We have a few mods in our addon browser which are not from these public platforms.

For these we have written our own translation tools, so that we can automatically fetch information about addons from the websites over which they are distributed.

The effort required for this is almost gigantic, because we can connect only one mod or plugin and not many as with the platforms.

Furthermore, these websites must be built so that the translation tool can read the website.

Also the downloads of the mods must not be behind pages like adfly etc., we can't bypass these sites automatically.

Websites like the one on the Dragon block c simply do not meet these requirements.

Plugin upload

https://support.aternos.org/hc…ding-files-and-FTP-access

Modpacks

Everything I have written so far in this post refers exclusively to addons (mods / plugins).

Modpacks are something else again. Modpacks are managed semi-automatically. We have to add and include them manually.

We monitor automatically if updates are available, but we have to do the update itself manually.

A full automation is difficult because every modpack is provided differently, different tasks must be done and we have to put them into a uniform format to make them work with the Aternos system.

Why do you write all that stuff here and not in something like the How to write a (good) plugin/modpack/mod request post?

Simply because nobody reads through it. And of those who read through it, only half understand it.

The "How to write a (good) plugin/modpack/mod request" post deals only with the hard facts.

The "why" hardly anyone is interested.

If someone is really interested, he will find it here.

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