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Originally Posted by JaTochNietDan
Professionality
This is a point that I cannot stress enough, the professionality of your server is the key to it becoming popular and successful.Why is it so important? Professionality is extremely important because it gives players a sense of feeling safe when playing on your server, it gives them confidence that the server will be sticking around for a long time. This is especially important for servers with a lot of emphasis on persistant player stats, players will want to feel good about making your server a regular server for them, otherwise they may feel they are wasting their time and that all of those stats they gained will die with the server.
Website
It's not enough to just have an SA-MP server these days, players also expect a website and a forum. They expect to be able to get information from the website and post on the forums, it's also a huge plus to have live information about players on the server and other statistics viewable through the website. It's important that your website uses a paid top level domain, other-wise players will be deterred by free domains. The site should also look professional and should be simple to navigate, if it looks like it was made in Microsoft Paint, it will turn a lot of users off.
Hosting
It is important that your website and server are both hosted by professional companies, the server should be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Sometimes I've seen people trying to make servers where it's online from 12:00PM to 12:00AM daily or something like that, that is absolutely absurd, people are not going to get on at specific times just to play on your server, no matter how good the gamemode is. Players should be able to come and go at any times they want, it will also prevent isolating people from other time-zones.
Unique Gamemode
Downloading game-modes from the SA-MP forums and setting up a server with that is not going to get you any players. Unlike games such as Counter-Strike: Source, SA-MP players expect to be joining a server with a lot of unique features and ideas. This also enforcers their belief in the server, as they can be confident that the people running the server will be providing updates to the server as time goes on, as that keeps people interested.
Persistant Statistics
It is absolutely critical that your server has persistant statistics, players should be able to make their own accounts and have stats saved to their account. This gives players a sense of progression, a reason to continue playing and adding more statistics to their account which they can show off to their friends or use as bragging rights against their enemies.
Difficulty of progression
In servers with a lot of progression, it shouldn't be extremely easy to progress to the top, it should take time and effort to get anywhere. If players are given everything too easily, then what reason will they have to keep playing and working towards a goal? You should also never give players free stuff, this includes your friends, administrators and even yourself. It makes the other players feel bad about the fact there are other more "special" players who get things for free that they had to work so hard for.
Administration
This is an extremely important one, players need to feel that there are competent, mature administrators running the server. If administrators are starting flame wars, insulting people or abusing their power, this is going to taint the views of your server and the professionality of it. It will discourage players from playing on the server if they see problems within the administration team. Administrators should be closely moderated for abusive activity or acting immaturely, it is crucial that they act mature and precise. People are going to be looking at your administrators as an example of how to behave, so make it a good example.
Dealing with players
When dealing with players, you should deal with them in the most professional way as possible, talk to them with proper grammar and the best English you can. They need to feel as if you're there to do your job and help them out. As an example, when people evade bans, don't interact with them or give them any satisfaction, simply ban them again as soon as you are confident they are evading a ban.
Taking bans seriously
Bans need to be taken seriously, if you just un-ban anyone that gets banned a few minutes after you ban them, then it's going to be a pointless way of punishing people. The worse thing you could do is ban someone for a few weeks and end up un-banning them a week before hand. You need to go through with your actions and stick to them, otherwise players will lose respect for you and feel that you can be walked all over.
Treat everyone equally
Players, moderators, administrators and whatever else need to be treated the same, if you start giving people unique treatment, then other players will feel isolated and irritated at the fact that other people are getting special treatment just because they are friends with a moderator or because they are a moderator.
Clear and precise rules
Every server needs some rules, otherwise the server will just turn into a chaotic and un-controlled experience. This works in some cases, but not many. It is important that players are shown the rules, know them and understand them. It is also important that these rules are clear and specific. A specific punishment does not need to be highlighted for each rule, although there is no problem with having that either.
Hosted list
The hosted list is optional as always, but for servers that are just starting up with no original player-base, then it is highly recommend to get yourself a spot on the hosted list. It costs Ђ12.50 a month and can be purchased from game-mp.com. This will add to the professionality of your server and also get your server a lot more traffic, as generally good servers are the ones willing to pay the extra few euros a month to get a place on the list and show they are dedicated to making a good server.
Provide updates
It's important that your server recieves regular updates to keep the player-base interested, otherwise people are going to get bored and wander away from your server into other servers. You should also make posts about the updates in your forums, highlighting the changes you've made and maybe even future updates that may be coming to the server, it will keep players excited and give them a reason to keep playing.
Making advertisements
Do not go on other servers or websites and send messages about joining your lovely new server, if you do this, you will make your server look extremely un-professional and attract players from other servers that are intent on causing havoc in your server as revenge. Instead, create an explanitory and colorful advertisement on the Server Advertisements board on the SA-MP forums. You could also invest your time into making videos for the server and posting them in the Screenshots and Videos section, showing off some of the gameplay in your server.
Good server name
You should spend quite a while thinking of an innovative and simple server name that everyone can remember, while being unique enough to be something that they will remember. Don't call your server "super awesome freeroam/dm/race/dance", it looks quite silly and people will be hesitant to join. It's also important not to copy other server names, as then your server will be labled as a copy-cat server, people will simply join the original server instead.
Conclusion
Setting up a server is easy, but making it a success is not as easy. It takes time, patience, effort and even a bit of self control. You need to be mature and precise about what you want your server to be. Sometimes, the odd few servers get lucky or are created at simply the right time and get a huge player-base while not really having many of these traits, but those servers will run into future problems if they do not improve. For the most part, most of these guidelines I have outlined are key to creating a successful server in SA-MP. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, if you think something is missing, or that I have helped, or you have any other general queries/questions. Please leave a comment below and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
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