The Minecraft Server part II

Here it is, the part 2 bit. First off I would have updated earlier, but nice as the new interface is it doesn't load on my computer. I've been working for a few days trying to get it up, and only just managed it.
RECAP!

*Woobly dissolve effect with added spinning*
The server was set up, there were a few minor problems along the way with player behavior and I was both perplexed by the popularity and amazed by the builds.
*Woobly- yeah what he said.*

The state of the server right now is this; I have a brand new map updated for version 1.8, on Friday I'll be making an update for 1.9 including generating a new map. I have 30 registered players, of which 15 are regular, and currently 3 more in talks on the "waiting list" (oh yeah,  I have one of them now). I've got a set of mods, no permissions system and a bit of a headache.

Let's pull back a bit and go over this. Since last time things worked perfectly, the server grew at a good rate and nothing went really wrong. There were hiccups with some mods, they either didn't want to work or had bugs and such. I very quickly found a set that did work and stuck with it. The permissions system also had a few bugs, sometimes a player wouldn't be allowed on and sometimes it would allow people to do things they shouldn't. More on this later.
The builds? They were simply amazing. After Rapture we all went our separate ways. Some of up built smaller projects, some bigger. The end result was too big to talk about, there were thousands. A few of note would be a scale model of the titanic, El Adira, a city that was MASSIVE and built mainly by one player with assistance from a few others sometimes... There was Serenity (a personal favorite) and a working railway system... mansions, housing, mines, underground conglomerates and more that even  I didn't know about! I did my best to keep up to date with the builds, but I could do it.
We decided after a while to rebuild the Settlement as it stood. We thought it had become a bit sprawling for the starting point, and it needed a makeover. This took the form of BURNING a lot of it (fun) and starting again. Except it didn't go quite right. It got started, then people thought it needed to be bigger so went somewhere else.
The New City, as it became known, was not much bigger in terms of blocks, but on flatter and better ground. It started quite nicely with walls (that later got a little out of hand and look a bit odd) and a few paths and such... then it got very out of control. Temples (big ones) dominated parts of the city, a fully functional beach was built but the housing took the form of a single hotel. A few other builds were placed, but nothing resembling a city was built... there was no flow or theme, just a set of buildings in a wall.
One player did manage to do something I found amazing, and build a working telegraph system from the Settlement to the New City. It spanned some thousand blocks and went right of rapture, and carried a Morse code signal.
In the end I must admit I was frustrated by the disorder of the cities (except El Adira which was exactly what I was thinking, except in a desert) and so I built my own. Draccrest was a rather large 150x150 block city that was a single solid mass of buildings. It took quite a long time, each building taking around an hour to complete because I filled them all with a mass of tricks such as redstone doors, secret passageways and even a whole black market (covered in black wool).
On the building front things went well, work progressed rapidly and the map became quickly populated with very interesting things. On the player front it was a little different, some people did things wrong as a one off, some kept pushing lightly. A group of people who knew each other in real life kept messing with each others builds. I didn't really have much of a problem if it was good natured messing, but a few times it got a little out of hand, and several times I thought that had they been doing it to someone who was't "in on it" I'd have handed out bans. What was I to do? They were quite happy to do it to each other, they were messing around in a good natured and friendly way... was that still griefing?
In the end I decided it wasn't, but cautioned them to tone it down a bit. One of them did have a habit of being a bit of a mega-troll though. Remember the TnT canyon? The player has become a form of server myth now, people say that you've "done a [player]" when someone blows something up. He also had a habit of drawing phallus in the world rather largely so that they'd show up on the map. I had warned him a few times about it as the maps (and server) are supposed to be "Family Friendly". I don't mind people swearing or insulting as long as they know everyone present is over 16, but we have a few players who are under (around the 12 mark) so nothing rude can be left around, like in signs/maps.
This player decided it would be funny to try and troll me a few times about "building a phallus" and eventually I had enough, and I thought this time he really had. When he started I made him a promise, if he did it again I would lock him in a bedrock phallus without any way of getting out. This time I did. He wasn't happy. He only spent about half an hour in it, but it was more the warning that was there.
By this time the server was big, and I was doing a lot of work... it was taking more and more time each day to keep things running, and stuff kept falling through the cracks. Nothing major, just things like mods failing, permissions messing up in small ways. All of it was fixable, but it took more and more time. Eventually I had an idea.
I opened up to ask for help, any of the players (or not even players) could give me a hand with something and gain the Godling rank, a sub-branch of the Administrator rank. They could basically do anything on the server, with the promise they would be good.
The first player to offer help was the infamous TnTer himself. He wanted to help out on the website, and I'll admit I initially didn't trust him. He'd done a lot of things to make me not trust him, so I was hesitant. I did give him the chance, and to date he has been a great help.
Shortly afterwards another player, one of the longest running, helped me run a facebook group for the server. Things started leveling out a bit, but again I found I wasn't playing minecraft much, or at all, and I'm still not.
Then came the dreaded 1.8 announcement. We started planning and plotting. As a group it was decided that the map should be reset for 1.8, partly because of the new terrain generation features, but mostly because it was getting cluttered and we needed a fresh start. Things happened.
We thought the best way to get a new map "in character" would be an apocalypse. It would give up the chance to go underground and emerge into a new world. That was the plan. We built ourselves a Glowstone Reactor, MASSIVE thing... then we left a few problems with it. One of the coolant towers leaked into the ocean, and we corrupted the ground around it to "poison" the landscape. Then other players joined in. The landscape was scarred, the trees "petrified" (turned to stone, literally) and massive meteor storms happened in the cities. Builds were burnt, and people really got into the spirit of the thing! Some was just destruction, but some of it was more controlled decay.
The best bit was The Bunker. One player built a mansion house with a small bunker under it. I say small; it wasn't. Not at all. It had two levels, about 10 rooms, storage, crafting rooms, a meeting room, a full infirmary and a stronghold. It was all underground and well protected. Then other people got their hands on it and it got bigger still. More rooms were added, a large store for a boat (don't ask), a swimming pool and saunas, a Spleef arena (a minecraft sport) and food/water supplies. It was fantastic.
Then 1.8 came out, and the server was shut down. We all retreated into the bunker.
Over the next week or so the server was down, I force generated a world 4000x4000 blocks (which took a while to learn to do) and then used MCEdit to pull builds out of the old server and place them in the new one. There were only a few that were being saved; Rapture, El Adira, the Space Cannon and the Bunker (obviously). I dropped them into the world (quite messily in some cases) and "decayed" them. Rapture was inside a mountain, El Adira had layers of sand on top of it...
We began playing a 1.8 server for a while. There was fun, problems, mischief and mayhem... but that was all a fortnight ago, so I'll leave the story there for now. In the next installment it'll be the 1.9 server up (I'm upgrading tomorrow), the trouble with fast releases on a server and getting money or not.
I'm interested to hear about any of your experiences, have you played 1.8/1.9 yet? What do you think about them?
Ciao for now,
~Longeye~