Installation

Requirements

Requirement	Supported
Server	Paper or Spigot, 1.21.11 or 26.x
Java	Java 21 or newer (Java 25 for 26.x servers)
Plugins	Vault and a Vault-compatible economy plugin, such as EssentialsX

If Vault or an economy plugin is missing, Shops logs an error and disables itself.

Downloads

Download the latest shops-spigot-<version>.jar from either of these:

• CurseForge
• GitHub Releases

Installing

1. Install Vault and an economy plugin.
2. Stop the server.
3. Put the Shops jar in your server's plugins folder.
4. Start the server, then run /shops to confirm the installed version.
5. Set up permissions for your players. Everyone can browse, buy and sell by default, but creating and managing stores is limited to operators until you grant it.

Where data is stored

Shops keeps its files in plugins/Shops:

File	Contents
config.yml	The plugin configuration
data.shops	All stores, including their items and balances

Both files are written when the server stops, so they won't appear until after the first clean shutdown. Any changes made in-game since the last start are also only saved at that point, so a server crash loses them.

Because config.yml is rewritten on every stop, stop the server before editing it, or your edits will be overwritten. Comments in the file aren't kept.

Upgrading

1. Stop the server.
2. Back up the plugins/Shops folder.
3. Make sure your server and Java versions meet the requirements.
4. Replace the old Shops jar in the plugins folder with the new one.
5. Start the server and check the log for the number of stores loaded, then run /shops to confirm the installed version.

Upgrading from 0.3 to 0.4.0: 0.4.0 drops support for server versions older than 1.21.11 and requires Java 21 or newer. The config.yml and data.shops formats haven't changed, so no migration is needed.

If Shops can't load your stores, it logs an error and disables itself without saving, so your existing data.shops isn't overwritten.