How to install and use PowerRanks [Java]

PowerRanks: The Only Permissions Plugin You'll Need

PowerRanks is a good alternative to LuckPerms. In some cases it's even better, as PowerRanks doesn't require you to download a chat management plugin to handle player prefixes; PowerRanks does it for you.

In this helpdesk article, we'll cover PowerRanks's installation process, commands and configuration file.

Let's get started, then!

🔌 Installation 🔌

As usual, the installation is simple and straightforward. Follow the given steps:

Stop your server.
Download the jar file here.
Go to witherpanel and navigate to your server's plugins directory.
Drop the downloaded file, which has a .jar extension, into the plugins folder.
Start your server and let the plugin generate it's necessary folders and confg files.

That's it for the installation part! Now, let's look at the fun part - creating and modifying ranks with PowerRanks!

🖥️ Web Editor 🖥️

Just like LuckPerms, most of your work will be done using the web-editor offered by PowerRanks. We'll still go through the
commands, but lets take a look at the web-editor first. Follow the given steps-

Open your server's console and type /pr webeditor start. You'll receive an ID as a result.
Click here to access the web editor. Enter the ID you received in step one.
It should look something like this: The Main Page
Click on 'Ranks.' You'll notice that PowerRanks comes with four ranks build-in: Member, Moderator, Admin and Owner.
Click on any given rank to open up it's editing menu. You can add permission nodes, or modify rank prefixes(the fancy word that shows up before a player's name when sending a message.)

PowerRanks handles prefixes by itself. You don't need to download a chat management plugin. All changes are saved automatically.

And now, let's take a look at the configuration file.

Configuration

Open your PowerRanks configuration file; its in /plugins/PowerRanks/config.yml

The official documentation warns that editing configuration files WHILE the server is running will revert them back to their original state due to how PowerRanks works internally. To fix this, either execute /pr reload config immediately after editing or edit the config while the server is offline.

Here's how the default config file should look like:

general:
  language: en
  autosave-files-interval: 600
  playtime-update-interval: 60
  case-sensitive-permissions: false
  disable-op: false
bungeecord:
  enabled: false
  server-name: Global
  uuid: 17dcb896-91fe-43bf-8cfe-806c1fee1359
storage:
  type: YAML
  mysql:
    host: 127.0.0.1
    port: 3306
    database: powerranks
    username: username
    password: password
    ssl: false
    verbose: false
chat:
  enabled: true
  format: '&a[world]&r [usertag] [prefix] [subprefix] [player] [subsuffix] [suffix]&r:
    [msg]'
tablist_modification:
  enabled: true
  format: '&a[world]&r [usertag] [prefix] [subprefix] [player] [subsuffix] [suffix]'
nametagedit:
  prefix: '[usertag] [prefix] [subprefix]'
  suffix: '[subsuffix] [suffix]'
announcements:
  rankup:
    enabled: false
    format: '[powerranks_prefix] &6[player]''s rank has been changed to [rank]'
  promote:
    enabled: false
    format: '[powerranks_prefix] &6[player] has been promoted to [rank]'
  demote:
    enabled: false
    format: '[powerranks_prefix] &6[player] has been demoted to [rank]'
rankup:
  buy_command:
    enabled: false
    command: say %playername% just bought the rank %rankname%
version: 1.10.7

Note that I removed some irrelevant parts to make the codeblock smaller.

Let's look at the important bits of the config file, one-by-one!

General

  general:
    defaultrank: 'Member'
    playtime-update-interval: 60
    autosave-files-interval: 600
    disable-op: false

The values above are the default ones.

defaultrank defines the default rank to be given to new players. Note that the member rank has ZERO permissions by default.
playtime-update-interval defines how frequently playtime for players will be updated. Set this to 0 to disable auto-updating.
autosave-files-interval is the interval in seconds for PowerRanks to auto save ranks and player data files.

Setting autosave-files-interval to 0 will disable it. Not recommended.

disable-op determines whether to disable /op and /deop as well as whether to deop all players.

This setting exists because PowerRanks cannot override operator behaviour. I recommend setting it to true.

Chat

  chat:
      enabled: true
      format: '&a[world]&r [usertag] [prefix] [subprefix] [player] [subsuffix] [suffix]&r:[msg]'

enabled should be set to false if you have installed any other chat management plugin(eg- EssentialsX Chat.)
format is a bit tricky to tackle since there are a lot of available options. The one given in the codeblock is the default setting. Check the table below for all format options.

Format	Description
[world]	The world in which the user was when they send the message.
[prefix]	The prefix of a player's ranks.
[suffix]	The suffix of a player's rank.
[subprefix]	The sub-prefix of a player's ranks.
[subsuffix]	The sub-suffix of a player's ranks.
[player]	The actual username of the player.
[msg]	The message send by the player.
[usertag]	The self-assigned usertag of the player.

Prefixes and suffixes will have their fancy colors defined in the rank's respective setting, which can be modified through the web-editor.

Tablist

tablist_modification:
  enabled: true
  format: '&a[world]&r [usertag] [prefix] [subprefix] [player] [subsuffix] [suffix]'

The same format options defined in the previous section of chat can be used here, with the exception of the msg value.
Turn this off if you already have a tab management plugin, though that plugin needs to support PlaceholderAPI if you want to add player ranks to the tablist that way.

Nametag

nametagedit:
  prefix: '[usertag] [prefix] [subprefix]'
  suffix: '[subsuffix] [suffix]'

Allows you to modify how nametags look in-game. Maybe remove the usertag option to get invisible nametags! (Not tested by me.)

There's some more stuff in the config that needs to be looked at, but for the sake of not making this article too complicated, we'll stop here and instead take a look at the commands and their permission nodes.

## Commands

Command	Permission Node	Description
`/pr createrank <rankname`	powerranks.cmd.createrank	Creates a rank, although it wont have any permissions.
`/pr deleterank <rankname>`	powerranks.cmd.deleterank	Deletes a rank.
`/pr addperm <rankname> <permission>`	powerranks.cmd.addperm	Gives the specified permission to a rank.
`/pr delperm <rankname> <permission>`	powerranks.cmd.delperm	Removes the specified permission from a rank.
`/pr setnamecolor <rankname> <color code/hex code>`	powerranks.cmd.setnamecolor	Changes the name color of a rank. Color codes like &4 or hex is supported
`/pr addinheritance <rankname> <inheritance>`	powerranks.cmd.addinheritance	Allows you to give all of the specified rank's permissions to another rank, and NOT the other way around.

Much of what is achievable through commands can be done using the web-editor, and from any device you may wish to use.