The PSA (Public Service Announcement) plugin for Bukkit regularly outputs messages to the server chat. Messages are set in the config.yml file, and they can be weighted so some messages appear more often than others.

Optionally, if PSA is running on a server with the Spout plugin, PSA supports having specific messages contain a recommendation for players to download the Spoutcraft client in order to use all of the server's features. Players already using the Spoutcraft client won't see the recommendation. (Note: The Spout plugin and Spoutcraft client have been discontinued, so I don't imagine this feature getting much use today.)

Notes about updates: This plugin was originally released for Bukkit 1.1 in 2012. It still works as of Bukkit 1.6.4-R2.0, and unless Bukkit makes any radical changes to their API sometime, I do not expect it to stop working in future versions. I consider this plugin to be feature complete. It probably won't be getting any updates unless Bukkit changes their API and breaks it, or I think up some killer feature it absolutely needs. (I might update it to cut out the Spoutcraft support sometime as that project is now dead, but this plugin's support for it doesn't hurt performance or anything.) The lack of updates does not mean the project is unsupported or forgotten. I still use it on servers today.

Installing

Place the PSA.jar file in the plugins/ directory. After the first run, a PSA/config.yml file will be generated with default values.

Configuration

The time value is how long in minutes to wait between displaying messages.

The variance value lets you set a maximum amount for the time between messages to vary. PSA will wait for an amount of time in the range [time-variance, time+variance] before displaying a new message. For example, if time is 12 and variance is 4, then PSA will wait for a random amount of time between 8 and 16 minutes before displaying a message. If you set variance to 0, then the messages will always be exactly time minutes apart.

The color value is the color for the messages to appear in. It can be any color on the list at http://jd.bukkit.org/apidocs/org/bukkit/ChatColor.html

The messages are all defined under the messages section. The first heading of the message is the message's name. (The message names in the default config.yml are "help", "rules", "rare", and "spout" for example.)

The message's content goes after the "message:" part. If the symbols "|-" immediately come after "message:", then the message will span the next few lines, but it must be indented! Look up the YAML format for more information.

The "chance:" part defines the message's probability weight. The default chance value is 100 if unspecified. A message with the chance of 50 is half as likely to be displayed at any time as a message with the chance of 100. The chance is a floating point value, so non-integer values (like 0.5) are okay.

The "spout:" part defines whether the message should be followed by a recommendation to use the Spoutcraft client for players not already using it. This option defaults to false if unspecified for a message, and has no effect if the server is not using the Spout plugin.

Commands

/announce <some message>

Immediately announces the given message in the style of PSA's messages in chat. Requires the "psa.announce" permission.

/psanow <message name>

Causes the named message that was defined in config.yml to be displayed in the server chat. Requires the "psa.now" permission.

/psatest <message name>

Causes the named message that was defined in config.yml to be displayed back to the caller only. This is useful for testing that the message fits on the screen. Requires the "psa.test" permission.

/psareload

Causes PSA to reload its config.yml file. This will reload all messages and settings, and reset the time until the next message is displayed automatically in chat. Requires the "psa.reload" permission.

Source code on github