SmartPing recognizes which player views your entry in their server list and provides dynamic, player related variables that can be placed in the MOTD. That means players see important stats and notifications about themselves before they've even joined.

It also provides an icon generator that displays heads of the online players on the icon. The base icon can be randomized by defining a group of image files. Those heads are retrieved by downloading and caching skins from Minecraft's official skin download source.

What's New

Please be a good server admin and keep SmartPing up to date. :)
Things you would miss instead:
/smartping addbg <Image_Link> for directly converting an image from internet to a server icon
/smartping vars for browsing all available variables and their current contents, including player related vars and icons

Features

Picking a random server icon from a folder containing images (any size, any file type)
Displaying skin heads of currently active players on the icon
Displaying a mail icon that is easy to spot when players have unread messages
Picking a random MOTD of a list with text entries that each consists of own variables
Using player variables in MOTDs (eg. {ESSENTIALS_MONEY} for the player's currency)
Setting an unlimitedly high amount of fake slots
See when players view their server lists (Great for spying players who do not join your server and to see when they play Minecraft)

Screenshots

This is how a new player sees the list entry when 3 players are online.

This is how a player who has played before sees the entry. The personal line displays
the Essentials mails and the Essentials currency, the "new mail" overlay is shown too.

The probably most interesting variable, TIMER. You are able to define a date in the future and the time difference between now and your date gets nicely formatted. Perfect for event announcements.

Still unsure what it can do or whether to use? See Showcase.

Variables

See Variables.

Installation

Download SmartPing. (click here!)
Upload it into /minecraftbukkit/plugins/ and reload your plugins.

For customization see Documentation.

Commands

See Commands.

Permissions

See Permissions.

MCStats

SmartPing v1.1.0 and higher uses MCStats, an analytics service that sends anonymous and general
statistics to mcstats.org. These statistics are public - I can't see more than everyone else could.
It can be disabled by setting plugins/PluginMetrics/config.yml opt-out to false.
Click here to see the SmartPing Page on MCStats.

API

SmartPing provides a folder for external access. Creating files in that folder
allows you to define custom variables your plugins can write to at any time.
See API Documentation.

Changelog

See Recent Changes.