Installing and configuring plugins on Spigot, Paper and Purpur — permissions, world protection, and the common failure modes.
Plugins need Spigot, Paper or Purpur. They will not load on vanilla or on Forge, which is why switching server software is usually the first step. Once you are on the right software, installing plugins is a drag and drop.
If a plugin is not doing anything, it is nearly always a version mismatch or a missing dependency. This guide covers the usual causes, and LuckPerms is where most permission questions end up.
Plugin servers need a MySQL database more often than people expect, and every Minecraft plan includes free databases.