Most «can't connect» reports from friends are not server problems. They are transcription problems. A minute spent on how you share the address saves an hour of debugging someone else's typing.
What goes wrong when you paste it in chat
- Discord turns the address into a link and swallows the port after the colon.
- Autocorrect capitalises the first letter — harmless for DNS, confusing for the person reading.
- A trailing space gets copied along with the address and Minecraft rejects it silently.
- Someone types
https://in front, because that is what an address looks like to them. - The port ends up on its own line after a wrap, and gets left out.
How to share it cleanly
- Wrap it in backticks in Discord
Putting the address between backticks stops the link preview and keeps the port attached to it.
- Say what to do with it, once
«Multiplayer → Add Server → paste this in Server Address. Leave Server Name as whatever you like.» Most confusion is people pasting into the name field.
- Pin it
A pinned message or a channel topic means you answer this once rather than every time someone new arrives.
- Give Bedrock players their own line
If you run Geyser, the address and port are different. Two separate lines labelled Java and Bedrock prevents the wrong half being used.
play.yourserver.com survives being typed from memory, from a screenshot, or by someone's little brother. A raw IP and port does not. It is also the only thing that keeps working if the address behind it ever changes.
Common replies you will get
- «It says Connection Refused»
- They reached the machine but the server is not running or is still starting. Check the console.
- «It says Unknown Host»
- The address was typed wrong, or a DNS record has not spread yet.
- «It says Outdated Client»
- Their Minecraft version does not match the server's. Tell them which version to select.
- «It works for you but not me»
- Almost always their own client or connection. Have them try a different network for two minutes.