Major bump of a dead thread. But hey, it's stickied so it's all a technicality. Anyways, here is how it begins. First you begin with giving permissions to your admins, moderators, and ops or "owners" of the server. Op's are not gods but instead a player in the server who has the capability of doing anything and everything so they need to be trustworthy people who you know personally. Because it is human nature to fuck someone over. Anyways here is the order of the plugins for beginning a minecraft server.

First: PermissionsBukkit - This plugin gives the server owner the capability of determining who is a mod, admin, user, or guest. However that is not the only thing it is limited to. Not only can you make many more groups to that but it is also the base component of all other plugins. It allows you to determine what permissions players have such as building or many other plugins along the way which I will be explaining.

Second: CommandBook - This basic plugin is the base of your abilities. It allows people to establish warps for their home as well as giving admins the capability of banning. Not only that but it allows time change, a motd, and rules to be establish. It also allows players to message one another through private chat. It has many more functions such as kits that all players some leeway as far as beginning in the game, as well as a list of who is online. Very helpful.

Third: WorldGuard - At the base of every great server there lay a plugin that allows or denies a users access to perform an action ranging from pressing a button to filling the world with lava. WorldGuard is a tool that consists of the components that creates order from chaos. It is used in a magnitude of contexts but check it out to see for yourself. http://cloud.github.com/downloads/sk89q/...f_rev2.pdf

Fourth: iConomy - The most advanced free economy plugin out there. Not only is it compatible with a magnitude of different plugins but it is a program in and of itself. It holds information of every player and there money that is held within a database upon your choosing and allows for a further in depth interaction with the server.

Fifth: ChestShop - Why have an economy if you don't have something people spend there hard earned cash with or to trade out items for money. With the chestshop it allows server owners and admins to create admin shops that allow the buying and selling of items in the game. A structured economy allows for fun game play.

When a server is produced with those basic components I will than proceed to inform of what plugins are to come next to expand upon greatness in the making. However with these five plugins a server could run at maximum capacity with little to no lag. It also allows for players that do not have premium to initiate themselves in a white listing process by way of the owners permission, in short allowing people who don't own the game access to the server if applied to a list after careful selection by a support staff member. Any player abusing this trust if caught were to be banned from the server.

EDIT: Also, the fact that even thinking of making a server creative is just a waste of time. I have been on a magnitude of servers but the more prominent ones have earned well over $10,000 dollars with little to no effort being simple survival servers. I don't believe I can make as much however these servers I had been accustomed to were truly despicable. The owners were rude and inconsiderate and the players alike. You guys have the hospitality, don't let FPS be your brick wall. Jump over it, walk around it, break through it just get out there and explore.