Question Essentials (& Group Manager) Chat-Prefix-Color Issues

*Please keep in mind I am not very experienced with any of this*

I want to create an SMP for a group of mine, and I would love to have a few things:

*Colored-chat (not a suffix, like actually typing &5 randomly in chat and having it translate to purple, just like you can do in /broadcast)
*Colored signs
*Colored prefixes
*Colored Suffixes

However, I cannot get any of these to work. I have tried installing Vault since I heard it was for chat colors and whatnot, but it didn't do anything. Then I realized that I didn't have Essentials Chat when I thought I did, and of course I couldn't find it on any bukkit sites... then I found it in the Essentials folder and installed it to my server (I use Beastnode by the way and go through the browser, I haven't downloaded any software like I see some people do) but it still didn't help.

Almost everything I see is completely outdated. For example I saw in a few places people told me in Essentials Config I was supposed to find:

Code:

chat:

# If EssentialsChat is installed, this will define how far a player's voice travels, in blocks. Set to 0 to make all chat global.
# Note that users with the "essentials.chat.spy" permission will hear everything, regardless of this setting.
# Users with essentials.chat.shout can override this by prefixing text with an exclamation mark (!)
# Or with essentials.chat.question can override this by prefixing text with a question mark (?)
# You can add command costs for shout/question by adding chat-shout and chat-question to the command costs section."
radius: 0

# Chat formatting can be done in two ways, you can either define a standard format for all chat
# Or you can give a group specific chat format, to give some extra variation.
# If set to the default chat format which "should" be compatible with ichat.
# For more information of chat formatting, check out the wiki: [URL]http://ess.khhq.net/wiki/Chat_Formatting[/URL]

#format: '{DISPLAYNAME}: {MESSAGE}'
#format: '&7[{GROUP}]&f {DISPLAYNAME}&7:&f {MESSAGE}'

group-formats:
Default: '&e[{GROUP}]&7 {DISPLAYNAME}:&f {MESSAGE}'
Builder: '&2[{GROUP}]&7 {DISPLAYNAME}:&f {MESSAGE}'
Moderator: '&5[{GROUP}]&7 {DISPLAYNAME}:&f {MESSAGE}'
Admins: '&c[{GROUP}]&7 {DISPLAYNAME}:&f {MESSAGE}'
Owner: '&4[{GROUP}]&7 {DISPLAYNAME}:&f {MESSAGE}'

However I didn't see this, I just saw:

Code:

chat:
  radius: 0
  format: {DISPLAYNAME} {MESSAGE}

So I added the "Group-Formats" thing, made sure it was the same color code from my GroupManger prefixes before the {group}, and saved it hoping it would work. ...It didn't.

I've been working on figuring out how to get this to work for a few days now. I've had problems like this in the past when I tried to start up a server for some friends and I, but I always gave up, and I never really cared about the prefixes, just getting sign colors (which I still can't do by the way).

If anyone has a solution to my stupid issue please let me know, I would love to get this done by Monday at least.