
There are several ways to do that, depending on the server, but most of them involve NickServ. While trying to connect to your desire channel, you might have seen a message like "Please register and identify to speak". Some channels start with & instead - rather than being global across the entire network, these are exclusive to the server you're currently on. You must include the first # it's part of the channel name. Once you see the text stop scrolling, you can join a channel with /join #channelname. It takes some time to establish an IRC connection. Once you connect to the server, wait for a moment. I'll walk you through doing it for yourself in step 6. The former means someone is currently logged in with that nickname, and the latter means someone else has staked a claim on that nick. Try connecting again with another nickname. You have 30 seconds to identify to your nickname before it is changed. Please choose a different nickname, or identify via /msg NickServ identify.

You may see a message about your nick - something like this: In HexChat, this is as simple as clicking the server in the list, then clicking "Connect" in the bottom right. For example, if the domain is irc.server and the port is 1234, you'd put irc.server/1234. Click Add - it's the topmost of the five buttons - give it a name you'll remember, click Edit, and add the domain name and port to the list at the top, separating them with a slash. If you're given a domain or IP and port and want to connect directly, you can add your own server to the list. That is, the domain name or IP address, and port. Many IRC servers have an associated website which will give you all the details you need. If you've been given a name but no more information and can't find it on the list, try Googling it. Fill in your nick at the top, find the server's name on the list and click Connect, and it'll all happen automatically.

In HexChat, quite a lot of servers are presupplied. You need to find two things to connect to an IRC server network: The domain or IP address, and the port. Therefore, it's generally a good idea to use a 9-character nick, so you can take it with you to different servers. Freenode - allow longer nicks, but the IRC protocol specifies a maximum of 9. If you don't know that, just put in unknown.ġ: Some servers - e.g. The username doesn't have to be anything specific, but it's recommended that you make it close to the username of your local user. If you have a consistent handle across the internet, I highly recommend using that, or some minor variation on it, so people recognize you elsewhere, too.įill your nick in in the topmost box, and add a username.

It can be at most nine-characters long 1, and can contain letters (uppercase or lowercase), numbers, hyphens ( -), underscores ( _), square brackets ( ), curly braces ( ), backslash ( \), backticks ( `), or pipes ( |). A "nick", or nickname, is how you're identified in IRC. This is a more important step than you might think. Because I personally use it and it's cross-platform, this tutorial uses HexChat, but all of them work similarly.
#IRC 311 SOFTWARE#
There are a wide variety of IRC clients, from command-line software like irssi to the GUI-oriented generic chat software Pidgin. This step, as you might guess, depends on your operating system. how do you use it? You've been told that your favorite project is on #aproject on Freenode, but how do you get on that channel, too? Well, in big, abstract steps: It's also pretty common in open-source projects, as a way to get support.īut. As of this writing, the IRC network I'm on the most has 86,546 users, and according to, the top 100 most popular IRC networks have 234,581 users combined. It's from the late 1980s, but it's still around, and still fairly widely used.
