My problem with such a method is that there is no bans.txt.
To get my server to work, I only needed to open the proper port on my modem and give people the name & password of the server. I didn't follow this tutorial; I only looked it up in hopes that there would be a way to unban people. It was private, and not public, as I don't intend to run a public server without a separate machine due to obvious performance issues that would arise.
People were capable of joining and playing and we did for a few hours but there was a ban issued that I want to reverse, and I can't do that because well, there is no bans.txt. I tried to follow the tutorial and I did but no bans.txt was created from it. The user is still banned, too.