One morning you may find half of the shared base torn down or the chests emptied. Restoring a backup rewinds the whole world to that point, and all the good work everyone did in between is lost too. CoreProtect works differently: it records every block broken and placed in the world and every item put into or taken out of a container. That lets you undo only what the griefer did, and only in the affected area.

Installation and first setup

CoreProtect runs on the plugin family (Paper, Purpur, Spigot). Install it from the store in the panel and restart the server; logging starts from that moment. It can't see anything that happened before it was installed, so install it as soon as the server is up rather than waiting for trouble.

Players need permissions to use its commands. If you use a permissions plugin, give trusted helpers coreprotect.inspect and coreprotect.lookup, and give the admins who will roll back changes coreprotect.rollback and coreprotect.restore as well. Rollback is a powerful tool and shouldn't be open to everyone.

Inspect mode: the history of a single block

Type co inspect (or co i) to turn on inspect mode. While it's on, left-clicking a block shows who placed or broke it and when. Right-clicking a chest, furnace or barrel lists who put in or took out what. Type the same command again to leave the mode.

Inspect mode is the first step when you don't know who did it. Clicking a few points of a broken wall usually reveals a single name.

Lookup: a list of what a player did

Once you know who it was, use a lookup to see everything that player did in the area:

co lookup u:PlayerName t:2h r:20

  • u: the player's name. You can list several names separated by commas.
  • t: how far back to look: 30m, 2h, 3d and so on.
  • r: the radius in blocks around where you are standing.
  • a: a single type of action only: a:block for breaking and placing blocks, a:container for container transactions.

Results are listed page by page; to narrow a search, shorten the time or add an action type.

Rolling back and restoring

To undo what you found, use co rollback with the same parameters:

co rollback u:PlayerName t:2h r:20

This reverses that player's changes from the last two hours within a 20-block radius: blocks they broke are put back, blocks they placed are removed, and items they took from containers are returned. If you realise you rolled back the wrong thing, co restore with the same parameters brings it back.

Keep the radius small and the time window tight. r:#global covers the entire world, and a careless rollback can also remove structures that player built legitimately. Running co lookup with the same parameters before a large rollback, to see what will be affected, is a good habit.

CoreProtect and backups don't replace each other

CoreProtect works at the level of blocks and items. When a plugin corrupts the world, region files are damaged or a version change goes wrong, you need a backup. On our platform File Protection is on for every server and free: an automatic backup is taken every day, and while your server runs a restore point is created about every half hour. See our backup guide for details.

Keeping disk usage under control

CoreProtect keeps its records in a database on the server's disk, and on busy servers that file grows quickly. You can delete old records with co purge t:30d, which clears everything older than 30 days. Every server comes with 5 GB of free disk space and each GB above it is billed monthly; a clean-up every few weeks keeps both the space and lookup speed in check.

Common mistakes

  • Installing it after the damage is done. Events from before installation aren't recorded.
  • Rolling back without a time and radius. A wider operation than needed can undo other players' work too.
  • Giving rollback permission to everyone. Anyone who can roll back can erase any player's work.
  • Never purging old records. A growing database fills the disk and slows lookups down.