Building MineNepal, a Minecraft Server Directory for Nepal

Back when I was running DaPirates, I noticed something. Nepali players had a hard time finding servers. Everything was spread across Discord servers and Facebook groups. There was no single place to browse Nepali Minecraft servers, check if they were online, or see how many players were on.

So I built MineNepal.

What it does

MineNepal is a server directory for Nepali Minecraft players. Server owners can list their servers. Players can browse them, see real time player counts, check if the server is online, and vote daily to help their favorites rank higher.

It has features like server verification, featured listings for exposure, and a voting system that determines server rankings. The goal was to make it easy for Nepali players to find a server with good ping and an active community.

The tech stack

I built MineNepal with two languages. PHP handles the frontend and listing pages. It was quick to build and easy to maintain. Go handles the backend services like checking server status, tracking player counts, and managing the voting system.

Go was a good fit for the backend because those services need to run constantly and check multiple servers at once. Goroutines made it simple to ping dozens of servers every few minutes without blocking.

What I learned

Building MineNepal taught me a lot about running a real web service. Server verification, uptime monitoring, rate limiting votes, handling server submissions. It was not just a static website. It had to actually talk to Minecraft servers and report back accurate data.

The hardest part was getting the server status checking right. Minecraft servers respond differently depending on the version and software. Some use older query protocols. Some have plugins that mess with the response. I had to handle all the edge cases.

Is MineNepal still running?

MineNepal went live in October 2025. It listed over 11 servers and served its purpose for a while. Nepali players had a place to find local servers and server owners had a way to reach them. The project wound down in 2026, but it was worth building. If you want to know more about how I got into building things like this, read my story.