Curse

Welcome to the latest Minecraft Spotlight! In this week's issue we will be covering "LoginSecurity", a plugin created by lenis0012.

LoginSecurity helps protecting your server against unwanted players; such as griefers, hackers and other troublemakers.

The plugin achieves this by introducing an additional layer of security. Upon their first login after this plugin has been installed, players will have to set a password in order to be able to play as usual. Not setting up a password will pretty much prevent them from actually playing the game. After setting up the password, it will have to be filled in each time they join the server.

When using the plugin's default configuration, however, it is not required to set a password. Which pretty much defeats the purpose of the whole plugin. We will look further into configuring the plugin later.

Refusing to login will have the same effects as not setting up the password; the player will be blinded, unable to move, and unable to use the chat and execute commands.
In addition to password protection, the plugin has other interesting features in store as well, such as login sessions and login time-outs.

The login session is set to one minute by default. This means that when a player logs out of the game, they can log back in without having to fill in the password for one minute.
As a result of the time-out, players will be disconnected automatically after a certain period of time if they do not fill in their LoginSecurity password; both improving security and lightening the server's load.

Installation

Installing the plugin on your server is fairly easy. If this is your first time, simply follow these steps and your players will be enjoying this plugin in no time!

1. Download the latest version of LoginSecurity from here or here.
2. Place the "LoginSecurity.jar" file in the "plugins" folder, located in your server's main directory.
3. Start or reload your server.
4. Check if the "LoginSecurity" folder has been added to the "plugins" folder successfully.
5. Open the "config.yml" file found in the previously mentioned folder to configure the plugin.
6. Restart the server to load your new configuration. 
7. Enjoy your newly installed plugin!

Configuration 

As implied before, various features of the plugin can be customised and toggled on and off by using the provided configuration file. Options that can be disabled include:

• Password requirement
• MD5 encryption for addition security
• Sessions and time-outs
• Update checks
• MySQL

Additionally, you can change the other features according to your needs:

• Blocked characters (for passwords)
• Minimum and maximum length of passwords
• The length of both the login session and the login time-out

LoginSecurity is a great choice if you are looking to improve your server's protection. It will add an additional security layer which requires your players to login every time they join, not ding so will prevent them from playing the game.

Lastly, we also managed to secure an interview with lenis0012, creator of LoginSecurity. Read on to learn more about the plugin's development process!

What was your inspiration for starting this project?
I mainly started this project because at the time i wanted to use an auth plugin there was no plugin having passwords being optional
I wanted to create a plugin bringing that one thing everyone wants and easy control into one plugin

How was your plugin received by the community at its first public release?
People liked it a lot, it worked fine and had no bugs at all, however they told me it needed some more features.

Roughly how much time did you spend on finishing the first usable version of LoginSecurity?
It was the 2nd plugin i had ever made, but it ook about 12 hours to code it, my newer plugins use NMS and they take a lot more time to be created.

Have you come across any challenges during development and, if any, how did you handle them?
Minecraft 1.2 has been a real issue for many developers, it has been a shame trying to understand the new event system, but it ended up being a much better code.

What was your favourite development tool for this project?
I created a lot of tasks during the project allowing such nice things that can only be done by that. But the tool i used the most was the login event where it checks everything and prevents people from doing anything until logged in.

Have you learned anything new from this project?
I have learned MySQL, SqLITE and YAML saving in the past, and I loved developing it.

What stage of LoginSecurity’s development process did you enjoy most?
I am working on LoginSecurity 2 since about one week ago, its a massive new plugin allowing so much more than lower versions, It is an entire recode full of extra's that everybody will love when its out.

And what is your favourite feature of the plugin itself?
I personally think the Session is one of the best features, instead of having to login again every time you rejoin it gives a custom interval to decide how long a player has to rejoin, this feature can also be disabled in the config.

Are you currently working on any other plugins or updates?
Yes, I work on 10 plugins at the moment, I currently spend must of my time on BeTheMob and Statues, two amazing plugins using NMS (Packets) from CraftBukkit.

In addition to your Minecraft plugins, have you ever released any custom content for other games?
I started developping because of Minecraft, so not really, all i did was make some little mods for BF, but nothing special at all.

Besides your own creations, what are some of your favourite plugins from other developers and why?
I love the developer Begerkiller, He was one of the best developers i have ever worked with, he created NoLagg, TrainCarts, MyWorlds and SignLink. I took over all of his project and i continue releases for 1.4.6+ for his plugins, but they are amazing.

Do you have any advice for other potential plugin developers?
When you start developing, start watching some tutorials on YouTube for 2-3 days, then make some really easy plugins that just show messages to players, its a good way to start off. For really advanced developers having problems with changing Fields and package names, a library is something useful you can create and build all your plugins from. It really helps when you use the same code in a lot of plugins.

Many thanks to lenis0012 for creating this plugin and for participating in our interview!

Thanks to MadPixel for the Minecrafter font.