How to Upload Your Own World to Your Minecraft Server

Before you start

Four things will save you trouble later:

• Open the world once in the same Minecraft version your server runs. You can upgrade a world, but never downgrade it - a 1.21 world will be corrupted if you force it onto a 1.20 server.
• Run /setworldspawn where you want new players to start.
• Using datapacks or world generation mods? They have to be installed on the server too, otherwise you get visible seams in the terrain.
• Back up the server current world before overwriting anything.

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Step 1 - Find your world on your computer

Close Minecraft completely so everything is saved to disk. Then locate your world folder:

System	Path
Windows	%APPDATA%\.minecraft\saves\
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/saves/
Linux	~/.minecraft/saves/

Each subfolder is one world. It contains level.dat, region/ and data/ among other things.

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Step 2 - Zip the world

Right-click the world folder itself and compress it to .zip - not the whole saves folder.

When you open the zip file you should see level.dat straight away. If there is an extra folder wrapped around it, the world ends up one level too deep on the server and will not be found.

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Step 3 - Upload it to the server

1. Log in to the Potionhost control panel and stop the server. If you upload onto a running server, it overwrites your files when it shuts down.
2. Open Files and go to the server root directory.
3. Upload your .zip file and extract it there.

If the world is several gigabytes, SFTP is faster and more reliable than uploading through the browser.

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Step 4 - Running Paper or Spigot? The Nether and End have to be moved

This step is the classic trap. Singleplayer and a vanilla server store all three dimensions in one folder:

MyWorld/
├── region/        (Overworld)
├── DIM-1/         (Nether)
└── DIM1/          (The End)

Paper, Spigot and Purpur use three separate folders instead:

MyWorld/              (Overworld)
MyWorld_nether/DIM-1/ (Nether)
MyWorld_the_end/DIM1/ (The End)

How to convert it:

1. Create the folders MyWorld_nether and MyWorld_the_end in the server root.
2. Move DIM-1 from the world folder into MyWorld_nether.
3. Move DIM1 into MyWorld_the_end.

If your world is called something other than MyWorld, the folder names have to follow - so yourname_nether and yourname_the_end.

Skip this step and the Overworld works fine, but the Nether and End are generated from scratch - everything you built in them is gone. If your server runs vanilla, do not move anything: DIM-1 and DIM1 stay exactly where they are.

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Step 5 - Point the server at the world

1. Open server.properties under Files.
2. Find the level-name line and enter the folder name:

level-name=MyWorld

3. Save the file and start the server.

The name has to match the folder exactly, capitalisation included. The server runs Linux, where MyWorld and myworld are two different things.

Watch Console during startup. It should say Preparing level "MyWorld". If it says something else, the server has created a new empty world instead.

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What does not come along automatically?

• Server settings such as gamemode, difficulty, whitelist and spawn protection are controlled by server.properties - not by the world. Set them up again.
• Your inventory may carry over if the server runs in online mode and you use the same Minecraft account, but do not count on it. Buildings, chests, redstone and terrain always come along.

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Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely cause	Fix
The server creates a new empty world	level-name does not match the folder name	Correct the name - check capitalisation
The world is not in the root folder	The zip contained an extra folder	Move the contents up one level
The Nether and End are empty and new	DIM-1 and DIM1 were not moved	Follow Step 4
The server crashes on startup	The world is from a newer Minecraft version	Run the server on at least the same version
Villages and structures have vanished	The data folder was not in the zip	Upload the data/ folder from your world
Your changes disappeared again	The server was running while you uploaded	Stop the server, upload again, start
Players spawn in the wrong place	The world spawn is not set	Run /setworldspawn in-game

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Good advice

• Keep your original .zip file somewhere safe. Then you can always start over.
• Always back up the existing server world before overwriting it.
• If you change Minecraft version later, back up first - the upgrade cannot be undone.
• If you need several worlds side by side on the server, manage them with a plugin such as Multiverse Core.

Is your world too large to upload, or will it not load? Contact our support team - we are happy to help you get it in place.