JoinBook

Make your Minecraft server's first 60 seconds unforgettable.

JoinBook is a lightweight, beautiful, highly configurable player-onboarding plugin for Paper servers. When a player joins for the first time, JoinBook replaces the usual wall of chat text with a short welcome, an optional title/sound, and a polished interactive menu covering rules, getting-started tips, Discord, and live server info.

No database, no external web service, no PlaceholderAPI dependency — it works immediately after installation with sensible defaults.

Features

• First-join detection with a configurable welcome message, sound, and title
• A clean, configurable 27-slot (or larger) GUI with gradient MiniMessage styling
• Modular pages: Welcome, Rules, Getting Started, Discord, Server Info
• Fully configurable buttons — material, slot, name, lore, sound, enabled state
• Live server info (online/max players, uptime, world, version) computed on demand, no repeating tasks
• Optional "returning player" welcome-back message
• UUID-based onboarding persistence (data.yml) that degrades gracefully if corrupted
• /joinbook reload for safe, zero-downtime config reloads
• /joinbook reset <player> for admins/testers
• Internal placeholder system (%player%, %server%, %online%, %max_players%, %version%, %uptime%) — no PlaceholderAPI required
• Every player-facing string lives in messages.yml

Requirements

• Paper (or a Paper fork) for Minecraft 1.21.x
• Java 21

Installation

1. Download JoinBook-1.0.0.jar
2. Drop it into your server's plugins/ folder.
3. Restart the server.
4. config.yml, messages.yml, and data.yml are generated automatically in plugins/JoinBook/.

No further setup is required — the plugin works out of the box.

Configuration

Edit plugins/JoinBook/config.yml (formatting via MiniMessage):

first-join:
  enabled: true
  open-gui: true
  delay-ticks: 20

gui:
  title: "<gradient:#ff8acb:#b98cff><bold>JoinBook</bold></gradient>"
  rows: 3
  buttons:
    rules:
      enabled: true
      slot: 10
      material: BOOK
      name: "<yellow><bold>Rules"
      lore:
        - "<gray>Read the server rules."
        - ""
        - "<green>Click to open"

After editing, run /joinbook reload — no restart needed. All player-facing text lives separately in messages.yml.

Commands

Command	Aliases	Description
/joinbook	/jb	Opens your JoinBook (same as /joinbook open)
/joinbook open		Opens the JoinBook menu
/joinbook reload		Reloads config.yml and messages.yml
/joinbook help		Shows command help
/joinbook version		Shows plugin/server version info
/joinbook reset <player>		Resets a player's onboarding state

Permissions

Permission	Default	Description
joinbook.use	true	Open and use the JoinBook menu
joinbook.admin	op	Grants all administrative permissions below
joinbook.reload	op	Reload configuration
joinbook.reset	op	Reset a player's onboarding state