Whitelist and Player Access Management

If you are hosting a private server for friends, enabling a whitelist prevents random internet bots and port-scanning griefers from entering your world.

Whitelist Commands (In Console or In-Game)

1. Enable the Whitelist

whitelist on

2. Add Players to the Whitelist

whitelist add PlayerName

3. Remove Players

whitelist remove PlayerName

4. View Whitelisted Players

whitelist list

5. Disable the Whitelist

whitelist off

Direct Editing of whitelist.json

If the server is offline:

1. Open Files in the dashboard.
2. Click whitelist.json.
3. You will see an array of player objects with UUIDs:

[
     {
       "uuid": "069a79f4-44e9-4726-a5be-fca90e38aaf5",
       "name": "Notch"
     }
   ]

1. Save and start your server.

Managing Operators (OPs)

Operators hold full administrative control over in-game commands:

# Grant operator status
op PlayerName

# Revoke operator status
deop PlayerName

Security Reminder: Only grant OP status to trusted players. Use permission plugins like LuckPerms to grant specific command permissions rather than full vanilla OP.

Banning and Moderation

# Ban player by username (Supported on all nodes)
ban PlayerName "Griefing builds"

# Ban player by IP address (Donation Tier UK1 only)
ban-ip PlayerName

# Unban player
pardon PlayerName
pardon-ip IP_ADDRESS

# Kick a player immediately
kick PlayerName "Please read the rules"

Important Note on IP Banning (NL0 vs UK1):

All FreeMcHosting nodes are self-hosted and operated directly by our team. On the Free Tier (NL0), incoming network traffic is proxied to shield the backend. Because connections flow through our proxy, the server only sees the proxy IP address, which means NL0 has no IP banning capabilities. Running /ban-ip on NL0 will either fail or accidentally ban the proxy itself. On NL0, always moderate players using username bans (/ban <player>) or whitelisting (/whitelist on). The Donation Tier (UK1) uses direct routing, giving administrators full /ban-ip capabilities.

FreeMcHosting runs entirely on a nonprofit basis. We put our resources into providing free Minecraft servers, helping more people build, explore and connect.