MC Panel
in progressRun a Minecraft server on the computer you already own, and control it from a browser anywhere — without ever opening the router.
Who it's for
The player with a good PC and a bad router
You want to play with a group of friends. You have a machine at home that is more than fast enough. And then you hit one of these:
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Port forwarding isn't an option
Either it's beyond you, or your provider has you behind carrier-grade NAT and there is simply no public address to forward to.
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Paid hosting charges monthly for power you already have
The hardware sitting in your room is faster than the plan you'd be paying for.
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When you're out, nobody can start the server
Your friends are waiting and the one person who can turn it on is somewhere else.
It is not built for hosting companies or large server networks. Pterodactyl already does that job well.
Why another one
Everyone solves half of it
Plenty of good tools exist. Each one hands you the other half of the problem to solve yourself.
| Tool | What it leaves to you |
|---|---|
| Pterodactyl | Linux, Docker and a public IP. Written for professionals. |
| Crafty Controller | A good panel — reachability from outside is your problem. |
| MCSManager | Same again. |
| Playit.gg | Solves reachability, but manages nothing. |
| AMP | Nice panel, and you pay for it. |
Either you get a panel and have to fix the networking, or you get the networking and have to run the server yourself. MC Panel is an attempt to do both and hide it behind an installer — for someone on Windows who does not want to learn either.
Design
Three rules it doesn't break
A panel that runs commands on someone's home machine is a liability if it is written carelessly. These are fixed from the first line.
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It listens on localhost only
The panel binds to 127.0.0.1 and nothing else. Reaching it from outside goes through a virtual network or a tunnel — never by exposing the port directly.
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No command line is ever assembled from text
Java is launched with an argument array and
shell:false. Nothing a user types is ever concatenated into a shell command. -
The console is the game's, not the system's
What you type goes to the Minecraft server's input. It is a game console, not a Windows prompt, and there is no path from one to the other.
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No dependencies at all
The first version runs with
node server.jsand installs nothing. The live console streams over Server-Sent Events, which the browser already speaks — no library needed on either end.
Status
Where it stands
The local half works: the panel runs, starts and stops the server, and streams the console into the browser. The half that is still open is reachability — getting to it from outside the house reliably, for someone who will not configure anything.
The name is a working title. It will get a real one when it is clear whether this goes out as a product.