BetterMOTDS

For Paper / Purpur 1.21.x — Java 21 — Version 1.0.0

BetterMOTDS customizes how your server appears in the multiplayer server list. It sets a two-line MOTD, controls the displayed player count (real or faked), adds a hover player-sample, and swaps the server icon — with completely separate profiles for normal and maintenance mode. MOTD entries can rotate randomly, sequentially or per day, and each entry can carry its own icon.

Formatting supports MiniMessage, hex colors and legacy color codes.

Features

• Two-line MOTD with per-entry configuration.
• MOTD rotation — random, sequential or per-day.
• Custom server icons — a default icon plus optional per-MOTD icons (64x64 PNG).
• Player count control — real, static, random or offset for both the online and max counts.
• Hover player-sample — custom lines shown when hovering the player count in the list.
• Separate maintenance profile — its own MOTD, icon, counts, hover and reason.
• Maintenance join blocking — kick joining players during maintenance, with a bypass permission and a configurable kick message.
• Flexible formatting — MiniMessage, hex (&#RRGGBB) and legacy & codes.
• Placeholders — {online}, {max}, {fake_online}, {fake_max}, {tps}, {reason}.
• Bilingual language files — en_US and pt_PT included.

Commands

Command	Description	Permission
/motd reload	Reload the configuration and language files.	motd.admin
/motd status	Show whether maintenance mode is active (and its reason).	motd.admin

Alias: /bmotd.

Permissions

Node	Description	Default
motd.admin	Allows reloading the configuration and checking status.	op
motd.maintenance.bypass	Allows joining the server while maintenance mode is active.	op

Configuration

An excerpt of the default config.yml showing the main keys:

language: en_US

normal:
  default-icon: "icons/server-icon.png"
  motd:
    rotation-mode: random   # random, sequential, per-day
  motds:
    - line1: "<gradient:#1E90FF:#00BFFF>My Awesome Server</gradient> &8| &7Paper 1.21.1"
      line2: "&aCome join us! &7({online}/{max})"
      # icon: "icons/pvp.png"   # optional per-MOTD icon
    - line1: "&bWelcome to the server!"
      line2: "&7Type &f/discord &7for news"
  player-count:
    online:
      mode: real            # real, static, random, offset
      value: 0
      min: 10
      max: 50
    max:
      mode: static
      value: 100
  hover:
    enabled: true
    lines:
      - "&b&lMy Awesome Server"
      - ""
      - "&7Website: &a&nwww.example.com"

maintenance:
  enabled: false
  reason: ""
  default-icon: "icons/maintenance-icon.png"
  motds:
    - line1: "&cMaintenance Mode"
      line2: "&7We'll be back soon! &f{reason}"
  player-count:
    online:
      mode: static
      value: -1
    max:
      mode: static
      value: -1
  hover:
    enabled: true
    lines:
      - "&c&lMaintenance Mode"
      - "&7Reason: {reason}"
  join-block:
    enabled: true
    kick-message-key: "maintenance.kick_message"
    default-reason: ""

Key points:

• rotation-mode — how the plugin cycles through multiple motds entries per ping.
• player-count.*.mode — real uses live counts; static shows a fixed value; random picks between min/max; offset adds value to the real count. A count of -1 hides the numbers.
• Icons — place PNG files under plugins/BetterMOTDS/ (for example icons/server-icon.png). Icons are 64x64 and are cached in memory, so pings do no disk I/O.
• maintenance.join-block — when maintenance is enabled, joining players are kicked unless they hold motd.maintenance.bypass.

Installation

1. Requires Paper or Purpur 1.21+ and Java 21 (uses the Paper server-list-ping API).
2. Drop BetterMOTDS.jar into your server's plugins/ folder.
3. Start the server once to generate config.yml, the language files and the icon folder.
4. Add your icons and edit config.yml, then run /motd reload.

Dependencies

• MaintenancePlugin (optional) — detects a plugin literally named MaintenancePlugin exposing isMaintenanceEnabled(), or a plugins/MaintenancePlugin/state.yml file (the companion plugin by the same author). Other maintenance plugins are not detected; maintenance can always be controlled from this plugin's own configuration instead.

Support / Source

Source code: https://github.com/henriquescrrrr/carrageis-bettermotds