Hi Sam, Thanks! Ok, great that you've been using the addon:D. As for the nodes list, they should be saved into your blend file, if that is not happening, can you please let me know straight away as we'll need to see whats happening on your system (it works on mine, but there's always a chance it can break on another system, we lke to know about these cases so we can make a patch to fix it).

Also you can add some nodes in the default scene, connect to them, and then you should be able to save your startup file (with all your nodes connected) and they should be loaded each time you start blender.

As for starting render servers on a node without starting blender, for sure, I am going to write a guide for this but I'll tell you how to do it here:

First this will be dependent on your operating system. If you're using windows then you'll be creating a batch file or .bat file to configure blender to start a headless server when you run the batch file. If you're on a unix based system like mac or linux, you'll be creating a .sh file or a shell script. Ok, here goes...

WINDOWS:

Create a new txt file, you'll need to save the file name as something like cr_headless_start.bat (the exact name doesn't matter, but the .bat part is essential).

Inside the file you'll need to write something like the following:

"C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79\blender.exe" -b -P C:\Users\*your_user_name*\AppData\Roaming\Blender\2.79\scripts\addons\crowdrender\src\bl_2_79\serv_int_start.py -- "server_int_proc"

Save the file somewhere its easy to find it, you can simply double click it and it should launch a headless server! You can even put it in the startup folder and windows will launch the server each time you login to the computer :)

NOTE: please check the path where blender is installed carefully, you need to make sure that you put the correct path for blender as the first part of this command. Also please replace *your_user_name* with the name of the user you log into the computer with. Finally this command is going to setup a headless server for Blender 2.79. The addon can support 2.78 as well, in which case you will need to replace the bl_2_79 part with bl_2_78.

UNIX OS:

Create a new txt file. You'll need to give it a .sh extension. Again name it something that you'll remember what it does when you read it like cr_headless_start.sh for e.g. ;)

For linux, Inside the file write something like:

*Path_to_blender_application* -b -P ~/.config/blender/2.79/scripts/addons/crowdrender/src/bl_2_79/serv_int_start.py -- "server_int_start"

For mac write something like:

*Path_to_blender_application* -b -P ~/Library/Application Support/Blender/2.79/scripts/addons/crowdrender/src/bl_2_79/serv_int_start.py -- "server_int_start"

Once you've saved the txt file with the .sh extension, you'll need to open a terminal and modify the .sh file to give it the ability to be executed as a shell script. Once inside terminal type "chmod +x file_name.sh"

You can then run this file by typing /.file_name.sh inside terminal.

I've also included a couple of links to help you out if you want to make the file start at login so the headless server will always start when you start the computer and login.

MAC: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6442364/running-script-upon-login-mac

LINUX: https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiWwrTk_vPYAhUDfrwKHXbxDmYQFgg3MAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Faskubuntu.com%2Fquestions%2F704768%2Frun-script-on-login-script-with-sudo-or-startup&usg=AOvVaw39d3DELejxivP9FgnD7DRf

NOTE: similar to above, you'll need to replace the parts in ** with the actual paths on your system. I've used the symbol "~" above which is a shortcut to your user directory on unix based systems. So these paths should be able to be copied and pasted into the .sh file you're making as they should automatically refer to the correct location of Blender's script paths.

Please do write back if you have any problems, happy to help :)