How hard could it be to setup a Minecraft server?

My son and his friends are getting back into Minecraft, and they’ve been playing on some random server that they have some issues with.

I gave it some thought, and decided that I could set up a Minecraft server for them on a Digital Ocean. I mean, how hard could this be, right?

It turns out, it isn’t that easy. At least, I’m hitting a wall with this after my initial setup. So, what I did was the following:

• I first created a droplet on Digital Ocean, with a view to following this guide I found somewhere;
• I installed the current Minecraft Server version on my shiny new droplet (via SSH);
• There were a couple tutorials for configuring the server (here, here, and even here), but all I think I managed to do was install a bunch of stuff I don’t know how to use.
• I did register a custom domain that I’m mapping to the droplet for when I eventually figure out how to configure the server.

I’ve reached out to a couple gaming colleagues to see if anyone has any ideas. In the meantime, I’m tempted to just go the official Minecraft server route if I can’t figure this out.