[HOW-TO] Connect to the IRC channel (Guide w/ pictures)

[MadK]

1.0 What is IRC?

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is one of the most popular and most interactive services on the Internet. Sure, the Web is nice for finding info and E-mail beats snailmail hands down, but when you've been wondering 'where the others are?', then IRC is what you're looking for.
IRC is the net's equivalent of CB radio. But unlike CB, Internet Relay Chat lets people all over the world participate in real-time conversations. IRC is where the Net comes alive!

Using an IRC client (program) you can exchange text messages interactively with other people all over the world. Some of the more popular chat clients are mIRC, Pirch, and Virc for Windows and Homer or Ircle for Mac's. What program you use doesn't really matter; all of them connect to the same chat networks. When logged into a chat session, you "converse" by typing messages that are instantly sent to other chat participants.
Meeting people. IRC is great fun and you'll sure meet lots of interesting people and find nice spots to hang out! But, IRC is not something that you should just jump into without first reading up on it. You could feel very lost if you do not know some basic commands before you enter IRC, and you might not even know how to get out of IRC after that. So, we suggest you read some documentation (help files, readmes, FAQs etc) before you get connected to an IRC server, or it can be very frustrating for you when you get stuck. No worries, all info you need is available on mIRC's web pages and... mIRC makes things really simple!(Source)

1.1 How to connect

First of all, you must have an IRC client. For this tutorial, we will use mIRC. There are many other IRC clients available, a complete list can be found here.

Step one



Step two


Hit enter. You should now see tons of information going at an insane speed. You are not forced to read it but you may, whenever you are extremely bored.

Step three (OPTIONAL)

CLICK HERE

Step four



Hit enter. You are now inside the HL2Wars channel, but it's not finished yet. Carry on!

Step five


You will see a window pop up, hit 'Add'

Step six



There you go! Now every time you join Gamesurge server, you will automatically enter #hl2wars channel and, if you did the optional step, you will be automatically logged in.

Any questions? Ask them here.

[MadK]

Oh and, I would appreciate a sticky if possible.

[HellSpawn]

This is a good guide, and should be stickied, hopefully this will bring some more people to IRC
nice work

[Rogabeetah]

Now...just need some peeps! It's quite lonely in there.

[Sandern]

I'm most of the day around there (GMT +1)

[chewyiskickass]

Haha, I'm the only one on it right now...

[MadK]

I just realized I took a picture of the irc.quakenet.org server instead of irc.gamesurge.net!

Excuse my mistake! I fixed it!

[seantheman]

Works fine, shame mirc isnt free, any good free ones?

[Sandern]

I use X-Chat

http://www.silverex.org/