There are probably a ton of these out around the internet already, but I figured I would write another to help out all the new folks we’ve been seeing lately in the Church IT RoundTable IRC channel. If you’ll check out that previous post, you’ll see how to get signed on to IRC and join our channel. What follows are what I’d consider to be the next steps necessary for a more pleasant and enjoyable IRC experience.

1. Pick a unique nickname or "nick" as I’ll call it from now on. Just type /nick <somenickname> in your chat window until you find one you like that’s not in use. You’ll get a message in your ChanServ window if that name is already in use. Continue to change it until you find one that is unique.
2. Register your newly found nick. Type the following in to your chat window: /msg nickserv register <yourpassword>
3. Set your startup actions.  Most IRC clients have a setting in their options to allow the client to automatically run some commands on startup. This is really helpful! You can let it auto connect to Freenode, authenticate your nick with NickServ, and then join the #citrt channel. This is what my startup commands look like:

/connect irc.freenode.net

/msg nickserv identify gcl43

/join #citrt

Doing these things will make your life a little easier. One of the big advantages or registering your nick and authenticating is the abilitiy to kick off any "ghost" sessions of your nick. Just use the command /msg nickserv ghost <yournickname> <yourpassword> to terminate those ghost sessions and then you can change back your initial nick (and you’ll have to re-identify with NickServ as well). By using a registered and authenticated nick, you’ll also gain the ability to send private messages to other users.

I’ve got one more post coming in a few days about IRC – specifically, about our bot that we have in the channel and what he’s capable of doing.