So you want to pwn your kids in Minecraft ...

Open server.properties and set the white-list value to true, e.g. write-list=true. This means only people you want can connect to the server

Once playing the game the rest of the commands below can be used. Press Esc to get your mouse control back

To change your skin (what you look like) go to http://www.minecraft.net, sign-in and select Profile. From there you can upload a new PNG for your skin. If you search the web for minecraft skins there are plenty of sites with downloadable skins and ways to create your own.

To add players to be allowed to use the server within the game use/whitelist add

To make someone else an operator (admin) use/op <playername>

To chat to other players just press t then type in what you want to say

Monsters will quickly start coming out to kill you at night. To turn off monsters run/difficulty 0  (a difficulty of 1 is the default)

To avoid having to mine for blocks and put Minecraft in creative mode use/gamemode 1 (0 is the default survival mode)

To change the time to daytime use/time set 0

To view information about your location press F3. It shows your coordinates

You can then teleport to coordinates by typing/tp , e.g. example /tp -197 70 -216

To teleport to a friends location use/tp

To bring up your inventory press E

To learn how to craft items a great site is http://www.minecraft-crafting.net/