Game Servers

Uploading your own world

Bringing over a singleplayer world, a world from an old host, or a downloaded map.

Jul 15, 2026 86 views

Uploading your own world

Bringing over a singleplayer world, a world from an old host, or a downloaded map.

Before you upload

The world has to be one folder containing level.dat, the region/ folder, and the data folder (on 1.20+) — not nested inside another folder. If you extract a map you downloaded and the structure is MyWorld/MyWorld/level.dat, upload MyWorld (the inner one), not the outer folder.

Zip the folder up. Zips from singleplayer work fine. Worlds from other hosts often come as a compressed archive (.zip, .tar.gz, or similar); the panel's file manager can extract those directly. If it's a .rar, extract it locally first and re-zip it, because .rar decompression isn't supported in the file manager.

Upload and extract

Worlds are big, so skip the web upload for anything over ~500MB and use SFTP (covered in the SFTP guide). The web upload is fine for small adventure maps.

  1. Stop the server.

  2. Files tab → Upload → select the zip. Or drag it onto the file list.

  3. Once it's uploaded, click the file's three-dot menu → Unarchive.

The panel extracts it into the current directory. Delete the zip after it extracts cleanly if disk space is tight.

Point the server at the new world

The server loads whichever world is named in server.properties.

  1. Files tab → open server.properties.

  2. Find the level-name= line. It's probably set to world.

  3. Change it to the exact name of the folder you uploaded. Case matters. If the folder is MyWorld, put level-name=MyWorld. Don't add a trailing slash or the .zip extension.

  4. Save, then start the server.

That's the whole setup. If you set the name right and the world loads, you're done.

If you want to keep your old world too

Renaming level-name doesn't delete the original world folder. It's still there, just not loaded. To go back, change level-name= back to world.

If you want the uploaded world to be the main world instead of living alongside:

  1. Stop server, take a backup (Backups guide).

  2. Delete or rename the existing world folder.

  3. Rename your uploaded folder to exactly world.

  4. Leave level-name=world in server.properties.

  5. Start.

Don't double up on dimensions

If you're uploading a world folder that already has world_nether and world_the_end folders from the old host, zip those two separately and delete them from inside the main zip before you extract. If you extract them nested inside the main world folder, Minecraft will generate fresh empty nether/end dimensions on first boot and you'll overwrite them by accident when you upload the originals. Painful lesson. Keep them as three separate folders at the top level: MyWorld, MyWorld_nether, MyWorld_the_end.

Checking it worked

Watch the console on first boot after the change. You'll see lines like:

[Server thread/INFO]: Preparing level "MyWorld"