Lets take a look at how to upgrade plugins on a server with out losing any data that the plugin created. Easy way to update your plugins.
Why You Might Need To Update a Plugin
With all plugins they will receive regular updates, this can be due to a variety of or reasons such as security patches, upgrades to the plugin or Minecraft version updates.
Security Updates
Sometimes there can be security flaws that can be found in plugins with testing. Once these become apparent or reported then the developers will usually I update the plugin and release a new version with the security issue patched.
New Features For The Plugin
When developers improve or add new features thy will need to release a new plugin version. This version will have all the updates, new features and potential improvements from the last version. 98% of the time they will simply update but on the very rare occasion a developer may re write the whole code. They will usually put a warning out if this is the case.
New Minecraft Versions
And of course when Minecraft releases newer versions such as 1.18, 1.19 ect the plugins often have to update too so it works on the newer version also. Plugins stay competitive by updating tot he new version as soon as possible so make sure to check for updates regularly.
How To Update Plugins On a Server
Step 1. Download the latest version of the plugin you are updating.
Step 2. Stop your server before updating any plugins.
Step 3. Go to your servers files either by the FTP file access or by login into your server with FileZilla. And open your plugins folder.
Step 4. Now you need to delete the plugin (.jar) file highlighted in orange. Don’t delete the plugins data file, highlighted in green. This is what holds all the information created by the plugin, thus has all the player progress and configuration from the plugin saved.
Step 5. Now upload the new updated plugin in the plugins folder to replace the old one you deleted.
Step 6. Now all you have to do is start your server and the plugin will be updated.
Final Thoughts
By updating the server plugins jar file you can retain all the plugin data that was created by the plugin. Meaning nothing gets lost in between updates. The new plugin will simply run off of the old data file created by the plugin and just run smoothly from there.
