Plugins vs. Mods

Ok, I'm sure this question is probably on these forms somewhere, and I looked far and wide for it, but was unsuccessful. I run my own private Bukkit server for myself and a few friends to play on. I recently found the "Useful Food" mod that adds many more new foods. I am getting very confused as to whether I can install this on my Bukkit server or not. Is it possible to install mods? Or only plugins? I read somewhere that you can't install mods on a server, but if all the players install the mod on their computers we could still use it. But I have trouble believing this as the server would be unable to recognize the new food items and wouldn't know what to do with them. Correct? Also, if someone could just explain the difference between plugins and mods. Some sites I read seem to say they are almost the same, then others say they are completely different.

 

You cannot. Bukkit doesn't support Custom .jars,

 

Ok, thank you. So does that mean there is no way to get more food items on a Bukkit server?

 

There's a lot more mods out there than plugins, and neither works together, if you want to use mods you need forge and vanilla minecraft and if you want to use plugins you need bukkit.

There has been a project ongoing for the last year that merged forge and bukkit allowing you the best of both worlds but lately due to people being unable to work together or arrogance getting the better of them the build for the latest versions of that custom server is very buggy.

So the answer in short there's no way to really get any new content on your server using bukkit except for the plugins that you see, which in most cases are completely the opposite of mods, something I also believe a lot don't understand or grasp the difference, because if they did actually grasp the difference and what it could mean to your gaming experience we would have sen a lot less arrogance and a lot more helpfullness

 

There is no arrogance from the Bukkit team for anyone to mod CraftBukkit to allow for that kind of stuff. If any group wants to put in the massive amount of time and effort to do so, we applaud them. That said, there is only so much we can do to help those groups that won't drastically hinder our ability to update our software when a new Minecraft version gets released.

 

Plug-ins are only good for security and anything that is visible from the back-end.
Mods adds actual content to the game.

 

If each of the players using the server had the mod installed on their own computers, would that work? Or would the server freak out?

 

Here is your error bud, When you install a mod, (E.I. Exploding Arrows like my plugin, but in mod form) how are you going to share it? Bukkit is a community and provied MULTIPLAYER support with ability for server mods. Plugins are a huge part of minecraft, if you don't like em, don't use them.

 

Ok, so if there is no way to run mods on a Bukkit server, if I go back to a vanilla server, will the mods will work on that?

 

Nope! Have fun attempting though.

 

Haha, ok, this isn't going well. Point blank, is there ANY way to run mods on a minecraft server? If so, how?!?!

 

Ask the makers of those mods.

 

This is the bukkit forums, if you need help with Mods ask their original creators

 

I would look for an alternative "Mod" to replace your "Plugin" that is already designed for Multiplayer support (which should be coded for it already,) with google (Like every other power user).
If I can't Find any, I'll ask around in Forge IRC. If not, I'll learn to code one since All I'll might have to do is, change a few letters or numbers around, add an item and be done with it.

Bukkit is one way of coding and obtaining a solution. But depending on the community and trend, people may leave for mods. Hell, dynmap creator is supporting forge and he/she could drop all support for bukkit.

Don't get me wrong, the Idea of distributing code in a plug-in method is cool, and great. but once it conflicts with mods that has great content that is way more then text based or minor tweaks to gameplay. I'll drop plug-ins in a heart beat. which i will, once redpower comes out.

 

There is, it just wont be a Bukkit server.