Bukkit comes with a command for this, use "/stop" and it will gracefully disable plugins and save all your regions. I don't recommend killing your server unless absolutely necessary as this can cause world corruption. If you need more features there's plenty of great server wrappers.
IRC is probably the best place to find trustworthy developers. Most people who idle there are pretty involved in the community, and anyone idleing there in the first place is generally there to help people.
I'd also like to point out you can still negate nodes even if you use '*', at least with permissionsex. Negated nodes take precedence over OP status and parent nodes.
Did you disable fire spread? World Guard won't protect against the environment unless you configure it so. Still strange that happened though, I didn't think it would burn down while you're offline.
Check out these server wrappers, most of them will do what you're asking and more. If you have a droid or iphone you can also administrate your server while you're away from your phone.
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Rules are posted at each worlds spawn and as of now in this thread. "I didn't know" is not an excuse, you will learn that fast about life.
If you want to continue this conversation direct your browser here and make a ban appeal. This thread is used for general discussion and news.
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http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Programs_and_editors/Server_wrappers