Minecraft Color Format Codes
Every piece of colored Minecraft text, from chat to the MOTD, runs through the same escape character: the section sign § followed by one digit. Outside the game, anyone editing config types & instead, because § is not a keyboard key.
The conversion swaps only the escape character, keeping the code order intact: red (§c) and bold (§l) until §r resets, then gray (§7) without bold.
The table the tool actually generates has 16 color lines followed by 6 formatting lines, always in that fixed order (0-9 then a-f, then l/o/n/m/k/r).
Each character gets its own hex color, linearly interpolated between the two endpoints: the "S" lands on pure red (#FF0000) and the final "l" on pure blue (#0000FF), matching none of the 16 legacy colors exactly.
They are the same code, only the character changes. The & is the easiest to type and is accepted by many plugins and config files; the § (section sign) is the character Minecraft uses internally and that you paste into places like server.properties. The tool generates both at once, so you just copy whichever your destination accepts.
§ is the actual character the game reads as the start of a color or formatting code, but there is no keyboard key for it. That is why plugins and editing tools use & as a typeable stand-in, converted to § only when saving or sending to the server.
It depends on the version and context: hex support arrived later and more limited on Bedrock than on Java 1.16+. The 16 legacy §0-§f codes, on the other hand, work on any version of both editions.
Because another color code or a §r appeared earlier in the string. Setting a new color always resets bold, italic and any other active formatting, so they need repeating after each color change if the effect should continue.
§k is the "obfuscated" format: it does not change the color, but makes the client randomly swap the displayed glyphs every few ticks, producing a scrambled real-time text effect, used mostly on enchanted items and mystery-themed effects.
&6&lHard&r&eCraft &7| &aWelcome!§6§lHard§r§eCraft §7| §aWelcome!<gold><bold>Hard</bold></gold><yellow>Craft </yellow><gray>| </gray><green>Welcome!</green>Everything is processed locally in your browser; no text is sent to servers.