Q&A for How to Portforward Minecraft

Your IP address is displayed when you google "IP" or "What is my IP."

It is possible to host local Bukkit or Spigot servers, both of which allow plugins to be added. There are plenty of tutorials explaining in detail how to do this.

On the Minecraft main menu screen, there should be a button that says "Multiplayer." Click it. Click "Add Server" at the bottom. The IP Address slot of the new server page is where you paste the address.

Give them your public IP address with :25565 at the end.

Depending on your machine, open a command prompt and try "ifconfig" or "ipconfig."

That would be a very rare feature in a router, so you may simply be in the wrong section of your router's setup. Keep looking for an area to assign by IP.

There's no such thing - all you have to do is enter 25565 and it will direct all gaming traffic to that port and then to your computer, which allows your friends to join your server.

You can't port forward with an active VPN. You would have to disable it if you want to host a server.

You would give your public IP address. You can get it by searching "what is my ip address" in Google. Note that most ISPs assign dynamic IP addresses to their customers. This means your IP can change. Keep in mind to check and give your friends your new address if it has changed.

If you have a whitelist enabled and you are using the latest version of Windows or Mac, then you don't have to worry about anything. If you want to reduce the risk as much as possible, you can also limit the bandwidth usage for your server (In your router settings, you will probably see it when setting up a new portforward rule) to prevent people from trying to DDOS you, however it is extremely unlikely that anyone would even try to, especially if it is just for you and your friends, not a large server open to anyone.