The Mods and Plugins tabs let you search a catalogue and install with a click, instead of downloading a jar and uploading it. It removes the fiddly part of the job; it does not remove the deciding part.
What to do
- Search for what you need by job, not by name
«Land protection» finds several options; a half-remembered plugin name finds nothing. The catalogue is a search, not a directory you have to know already.
- Check the version compatibility shown
The listing states which game versions it supports. That is the single most useful thing on the page and the thing most likely to save you a failed startup.
- Install one at a time
The tab makes it easy to install six in a minute. Resist that. One, restart, check, then the next — the same rule as manual installation, for the same reason.
- Restart, do not reload
A newly installed plugin is not active until the server restarts. Installing and then wondering why nothing changed is the most common confusion here.
Which tab you want
| Server type | Tab |
|---|---|
| Paper, Spigot, Purpur | Plugins |
| Fabric, Forge, NeoForge | Mods |
| Vanilla | Neither — vanilla loads neither |
| A proxy like Velocity | Its own plugins, not server plugins |
The catalogue makes installing easy; it does not make a plugin appropriate, maintained, or compatible with the other thirty you have. The five-minute check in the vetting article applies exactly the same here — the convenience is in the transfer, not in the decision.
The tab usually shows when an installed item has a newer version. Reading that list once a month is a much better maintenance habit than discovering an abandoned plugin during a version upgrade.
The plugin appears in /plugins in green after a restart, and its command responds.