Set up SignBoard on your Minecraft server

SignBoard lets a sign, a villager, an armour stand or an NPC show far more text than a sign can hold. Players look at the sign and a board of up to 15 lines appears in the scoreboard area of their screen. You can also run commands when they look at it, click it or attack it. It is a good fit for spawn information, shop descriptions and quest givers. This guide installs it by hand and builds a first board.

Checked against SignBoard 1.6.16, the latest file on its SpigotMC page, October 2026. The author lists support for Minecraft 1.13.3 to 1.19.3, and the last update was on 28 February 2023 (UTC).

Before you start

• You need a Paper or Purpur server. SignBoard is a Spigot-family plugin.
• The author's page lists Minecraft up to 1.19.3. It doesn't say whether it works on newer versions, so try it on a copy of the world first, with a backup from the Backups tab.
• PlaceholderAPI is optional and gives you extra variables (Set up PlaceholderAPI on Minecraft). The {PMoney} variable needs Vault.

Install SignBoard

The Plugins tab searches Modrinth, CurseForge and Hangar. SignBoard is published on SpigotMC, so this is a manual upload.

1. Download the jar from the SignBoard page on SpigotMC on your own computer.
2. Open your server, select File Manager and open the plugins folder.
3. Press Upload (the upload arrow on a phone) and pick the jar, or drag it onto the file list.
4. Open the Console tab and press Restart (or Start if the server is off).
5. Select Plugins, press Installed and check SignBoard is listed.

SignBoard writes its files to plugins/SignBoard. They include config.yml, boards.yml, signs.yml and attachments.yml.

Turn off automatic updates

By default updates: auto in config.yml lets SignBoard download and install new versions itself when the server restarts. Many admins prefer to choose when a plugin changes. Stop the server, open config.yml in the File Manager, in the same plugins/SignBoard folder as above, and set updates: check, which only checks whether a new version exists, or updates: off, which turns updates off completely. Save and start the server.

Build your first board

Join as an operator (How to whitelist players and set operators). The command is /sb.

1. Create a board: /sb board new welcome.
2. Place a sign, look at it and attach the board: /sb sign attach welcome. For a villager or other mob, look at it and use /sb entity attach welcome.
3. Edit a line: /sb board welcome line1 &6Welcome to spawn. You can do this without looking at the sign.
4. Look at the sign again. The board appears on screen.

Each board holds up to 15 lines of 40 characters, and 600 characters in total. The title is line 16. Colour codes such as &6 work. To make a line blank, set it to &r. Two lines on a board can't have identical text, so add an extra &r to one of them if you need them to match.

To change several lines at once use lineX-Y, with \n between lines. linepushX inserts text and pushes the old lines down.

Show several boards from one sign

Group boards into a set, then attach the set the same way:

/sb set new rules = rules1 rules2 rules3
/sb sign attach rules

The first board shows when a player looks at the sign. They right-click or left-click to move between boards, like pages of a book. /sb sign give_book toggles whether the text is also given to the player as a book.

Commands on signs and mobs

/sb sign before, after and onclick run commands when a player looks at, looks away from or clicks a sign. Mobs have before, after, onattack and onkill. Separate several commands with |. To attach commands, a player needs the signboard.signcmds (signs) or signboard.entitycmds (mobs) permission. Both are off by default, so grant them to builders or admins in a permissions plugin (Set up LuckPerms on your Minecraft server). Every other player permission is on by default.

Admin commands

• /sb reload reloads config.yml and /sb version shows the running version. Only operators can use these two.
• /sb board list all lists every player's boards.
• /sb cleanup removes dead signs from signs.yml and attachments.yml. Back those files up first.

If it doesn't work

• No board appears. Stand within 5 blocks of a sign, or 8 blocks of a mob. These are the view_distance and entity_view_distance defaults. For a mob, look it in the face.
• /sb does something else. Another plugin owns that command. /signboard already works by default. Remove sb from active_aliases in config.yml so SignBoard stops answering to /sb.
• The plugin didn't load. Open the Console tab and read the first error after the restart.