Broadcasting Chat Announcements on Rust with the Advert Messages Plugin

Running a Rust server gives you plenty of room to shape the player experience, and chat plugins are one of the quickest wins. New arrivals often miss important details like custom commands, Discord invites, or upcoming events because nobody is around to tell them. The Advert Messages plugin solves that by rotating short announcements straight into the in-game chat at a fixed interval.

It is lightweight, has no commands to memorize, and works through a single JSON config file. With your hosting panel handling the uploads, getting it live takes only a few minutes.

Installing the plugin

Grab the plugin file first from the uMod listing.

• Open the Advert Messages page on uMod and hit the Download button.

• Save the resulting `.cs` file somewhere obvious on your machine.

• Head to your hosting control panel and open your FTP or file manager from the panel sidebar. Double check that you are on the right server profile before uploading anything, since installing into the wrong one is the most common source of confusion later.

• Sign in with your FTP password and step into the `oxide` directory.

• Open the `plugins` folder and click Upload in the corner.

• Drop the file into the upload area and wait until the bar finishes.

• Back on the main panel, restart the server so Oxide picks up the new plugin.

While you are there, glance at your server settings and confirm that uMod Support is enabled. It ships on by default, but missing this toggle is the usual reason a fresh install does absolutely nothing.

First boot

After the restart, three sample announcements begin cycling through chat. Those are placeholders baked into the default config, and everything from interval, color, and content can be edited. There are no permissions or in-game commands to set up. The file is the entire interface.

Editing the config

The settings live in a JSON file you can edit straight through FTP. The most common tweak is the delay between messages, because spamming chat every few seconds will drive players off faster than a low FPS night raid. You can also flip the plugin into random order if you do not want a fixed loop.

• Open your FTP or file manager from the panel again.

• Walk into the `oxide` directory and continue into the `config` folder.

• Find `AdvertMessages.json` and press Edit on the far right.

• Adjust the values you want and press Save.

• Restart the server from the main panel so the new config loads.

• Hop in-game and watch chat for a minute or two to confirm the new lines fire correctly.

Message ideas

The plugin is intentionally generic, so the only real limit is what you want to surface. A few ideas that work well on most Rust communities:

Community channels. Promoting your Discord, YouTube, or Twitter accounts is the obvious starting point. Just remember to actually paste the invite link or handle into the message, because announcing that a Discord exists without telling anyone where it lives defeats the point.

Website link. Most established Rust servers run one. Surfacing it in chat helps new players find rules, leaderboards, donation perks, or shop pages.

Tips and reminders. Rotating gameplay hints, command references, or crafting tricks tends to land better than pure promo, because it saves players from asking the same question every wipe.

For visual emphasis, the plugin supports inline color tags. Wrap a word with `[#color]` and `[/#]` and it renders tinted in chat. For example, `Welcome to my [#red]server[/#]` paints the word server red. To color the entire line, open with the tag at the very start and close it at the very end.

Common issues

Messages are not appearing. Nine times out of ten the server was not restarted after the config change. Save the file and restart. If you want to be cautious, stop the server before editing and start it back up once you are done so there is no chance of the file being overwritten on shutdown.

The config file is missing. If `AdvertMessages.json` is not in the `config` folder, the plugin almost certainly landed in a different server profile than the one you are running. Re-upload the `.cs` to the active profile under `oxide/plugins` and restart. If the file is there but the messages still do not show, a missed save or skipped restart is usually the culprit.

Useful links

• Advert Messages on uMod
• Rust server hosting
• How to add plugins on Rust servers
• How to join a Rust server