Setting up MineSync for the first time

This article assumes that you have already installed MineSync. If you have not, see Installing MineSync.

Once you have MineSync installed, the next step is to set it up so that it works.

API Requests

MineSync links your Minecraft server and XenForo forum, so the server node will need to be able to communicate with the XenForo forum and vice versa. As of MineSync 2, this is done via API requests.

To set up a successful API connection, you will need to create a secure passphrase to be utilised as the API key, and then set the same key in the MineSync config.yml

Create a long API key. You can generate one using Strong Password Generator. Set this as the API key in your XenForo MineSync configuration, by going to the XenForo Admin Panel -> Options -> MineSync -> API key, and pasting the key you just created into the box. Save your changes here.

Next, paste the same key in your MineSync config.yml located on your server, in /plugins/MineSync/config.yml in the "api-key" key.

Optionally, you can whitelist IPs that can use the API. If you want to restrict API access to certain IPs, you can add your Minecraft server's external, outgoing IP into your XenForo options. You can list multiple IPs by separating them with a comma. If you do this, only these IPs will be able to authenticate with the API. You will still need the API key to match. To disable IP authentication, leave the box blank. NOTE: If authentication is failing and you are certain the keys match, you could have the wrong outgoing IP for the server in your XF options. Leave the field blank to disable API IP whitelisting.

Board URL

To ensure the registration and link URLs correctly link to the XenForo site, as well as the API contacting the right URL to make requests to, you will need to fill out your URL settings in the config.yml located on your Minecraft server.

Open up the config.yml, located in /plugins/MineSync/config.yml. Here, you will see a "website-url" key and a "full-friendly-urls-enabled" key.

In the "website-url" key, full out your exact website URL (as it is in your XF options), with the protocol (http or https, depending on your setup). Do NOT include a trailing slash. The URL should look like: http://example.com

In the "full-friendly-urls-enabled" key, write either "true" or "false", without the quotation marks, depending on whether or not you have full friendly URLs enabled. If you aren't sure, click on a random link on your forum and see if the URL looks like http://example.com/index.php?forums/test-forum.1/ then full friendly URLs is not enabled, so set the value to false. Or if it looks like http://example.com/forums/test-forum.1/ then full friendly URLs is enabled, so set the value to true.

Adding Ranks

To sync ranks, add the details of the rank in the MineSync section of your XenForo admin panel. The key field when adding a new group is to ensure the in-game rank matches exactly, case-sensitive, the name of the rank in-game. Once your ranks are correctly added, MineSync will automatically begin to sync the ranks of players from the server to the forum.

Congratulations

You have now configured MineSync for use. It should now work with your server. There are other configuration options available in both XenForo's MineSync options and in the config.yml that are documented. You can fiddle around with these to access more complex functionality available within MineSync.