You just read on one of the messageboards that there is this neat workshop coming up that you’d be interested in attending and it is giving you an instruction like this:.IRC Crash Course

by

TDavid at tdscripts.com

You just read on one of the messageboards that there is this neat workshop coming up that you’d be interested in attending and it is giving you an instruction like this:

Use your favorite IRC client and get on over to:

irc.webmasterlive.com

port #6667

#scriptschool

Your palms start sweating because you have no clue what IRC is. Well that’s what this crash course will help you understand (hopefully). With all the new IRC channels popping up and the existing great ones it begs for a topic like this to be better explained as well as some basic netiquette to use when entering these channels.

What is IRC?

IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. It is a way for people to relay text commands over a server to each other in real time. Some people refer to these virtual rooms as “chatrooms” but the IRC lingo is known as “channels.” An IRC channel is prefaced by the pound sign #. So if the channel we were interested in going to was mainstage, we’d use #mainstage to refer to it.

How do I use IRC?

The most popular way is by using what is known as an IRC client. The “client” part comes from a program that you would download and install on your computer. There are many great freeware and shareware clients and it would be impossible to cover them all, so we’ll focus on referring to one of the most commonly used ones: mIRC. You can get mIRC at http://www.mirc.com/ — if you like the program and decide to use it, don’t forget to register it.

Do I need an IRC client to join an IRC channel?

No. In fact, one of the first ways most people get connected to an IRC channel is through a Java based interface which assists in the process of logging into the server. The problem with Java interfaces is that they are not full featured IRC clients, because they rely on your browser and the java programming to provide you with the IRC experience. You can view an example of one java based interface by visiting here: http://www.scriptschool.com/commons/ While this is one of the nicest java interfaces, it suffers, again, from being able to provide you with total control over the size of the irc window and the background colors (the webmaster chose many of these features for you), and if you try to browse away from this page in the same window you’d log out of the chat. You can change the text color, but not much more.

What do I do to log into an IRC client?

The first step is to launch the IRC client, of course. Once launched you will need to add the “server” to the list of available IRC servers you might want to browse. Before you let this concept confuse you, think of the servers like you’d configure your FTP editor to edit your website. You need to put in a server address. Well let’s go back to my example at the beginning:

irc.webmasterlive.com

There should be a place to enter this server information into. The next item is “PORT” which is where the server is “listening” for connections. If there is no port listed, try “6667” as a default. In most cases this will be an acceptable port to use. Some IRC clients ask you to define a “Group” — if you don’t know what this is or were not told to enter in a group, just leave this field blank. After filling out this information add this to your available list of servers. You may notice a bunch of servers like Dalnet, Effnet, etc. These are huge networks of IRC servers where you can find every channel known to man. If you have an interest go surf these like you’d surf websites sometimes. Don’t be surprised though if you find some really bizarre channels though.

You will now connect by clicking on a button or command that connects to the “default” IRC server (which will be the last IRC server you connected to). In our case we will be connecting to irc.webmasterlive.com server. You should see the screen scroll with a bunch of information. You might take a second and read through to see if there is any special warnings or messages pertinent to you. You may see things like “no bots, flooding, clones, nukes, war, etc” I’ll explain these a little bit later so you can be up to speed on what some of these things are. Just as there are annoying people in the world, there are annoying people on IRC who live to do nothing more than play games.

Choosing a Unique “nick”name

Just as there is only one of you in the world, it would be nice if on IRC you have a nickname which is unique to you so that others can recognize you when you enter a channel. For example my nick is TDavid. To change to the nickname you’d like to use type:

/nick NICKNAME

If you get a message which says identify yourself to nickserv, then somebody else is already using that nickname and you need to choose a different one. For instance if you go by Night – that might be a little too common, so try a variation like NightNight, etc. Play with it until you come up with something you like that nobody else has, and then move onto the next step to register your new nickname with nickserv.

On most servers this process will be active for 20 days, so as long as you relogin to the IRC server and identify yourself to the server at least once every 20 days, your nick will remain unique to you. To create your unique nickname use the following command:

/nickserv register PASSWORD youremail@yourisp.com

You will receive a message which says your registration has been successful. Now whenever you login for the first time you will be prompted to identify yourself to nickserv. To do this, you type the following command:

/nickserv identify PASSWORD

Now that this process is successful, we can actually join a channel and begin chatting.

How do I “join” an IRC channel?

To join a channel you type in the following command:

/join #channelname

So if the room you wanted to enter was #scriptschool then you would type:

/join #scriptschool

What do I do when I enter a channel?

If the room you enter is in the middle of a Q & A or moderated workshop you should enter as if you were entering a room where there was a speaker. It would be impolite to start talking and interupting the speaker, and IRC it is bad form to do the same.

However, if it is a freeform channel with no structured chat going on, it is a good idea to say something like, “Hello all :)”

Pay close attention to any message you are greeted with when you join a channel. Sometimes you’ll be told exactly what you should and should not do. Some channels even have rules that you can download and read. Let’s talk about the common things almost every channel will have a problem with:

Things you should NOT do in IRC channels (or do VERY sparingly)

flood – this is cut and pasting a lot of text to the channel all at one time or typing the same thing over and over and over again. It is considered very rude if you aren’t invited to do so because it can actually freeze up some people’s computers or kick them out of the channel if they have flood protection enabled inside their IRC clients.

inviting – entering a channel and saying, “come on over to my latest greatest IRC channel” Most channels will kick/ban you for this activity.

spamming – just as it is bad form to post your url where it isn’t solicited, doing so in an IRC channel is equally poor judgement.

USING EXCESSIVE CAPS – CAPS IS SHOUTING, DON’T DO IT, type in lowercase and VERY sparingly use capital letters or people will get upset with you.

excessive private messaging without invitation – If you are new to a room you can usually ask questions of the operators of the channel (those designated by a @ in front of their nicks). Be careful about sending excessive private messages to people without asking first. It would be something like walking into someone’s house and talking to them without an invitation.

discussing private business publically – Consequently, it is considered bad form to discuss private business out in the option so it is totally appropriate to send someone a private message so as not to embarass you or the person by discussing private business out in the open. If you have a problem with someone that is in the channel it is best to try and use private messaging to resolve your differences rather than to battle in the main channel publically.

sending DCC files to people without permission – Just as you wouldn’t trust files from a stranger in email, sending files to people in IRC is known as DCC and you shouldn’t do it without the person’s permission first.

ping – if someone ASKS to be pinged, ping them by all means, but don’t just ping people for the heck of it. A ping is a measure of how long it takes for your communication to get to them. You may hear people talk about being “lagged” which essentially means their connection is starting to lag behind the rest of the IRC channel. This is a fairly common occurence and not necessarily something to panic over. If you become seriously lagged you can disconnect from your ISP and log back in and sometimes get a better connection.

slap – slapping someone is like, well, slapping someone offline. Sometimes friends play around and “slap” people, but it is something that is considered rude in IRC if you just walk up and start slapping people around. If someone is being a jerk to you in the channel, this might be a good time to slap them so they get the hint that you don’t like what they are doing. Often times operators in the channel will “kick” or “kick/ban” lamers in the channel, so you might reserve yourself and see what the ops do before taking matters into your own hands.

begging for @operator status – Bugging the ops in the channel to give you operator status is considered bad form. Becoming an operator in a channel should be a normal and natural process if you hang out in a channel and become a major participator, the founder (the person who began the channel) or the other ops may decide to give you operator status. If they do, then this is not power to be abused. Now you get to be on the lookout for people doing the things outlined here so you can kick or kick/ban them to keep the channel free of losers. Once you get to know some of the ops you can politely inquire about what the process is to become an operator of the channel. But just blindly begging for ops will get you kicked from a channel and in some cases banned so that you can’t ever come back.

running bots or scripts without permission – you’ll notice when you enter a channel that sometimes you’ll be greeted automatically with a bunch of messages. These are scripts that are running and you can set up some of yours own to run. If you set up enough scripts to automate things you are essentially running a bot. A bot uses resources and most sysadmins understandably do not like their resources being abused. Also, operators of channels will often take a dim view of anyone running a script in their channel without permission. Ask first before running your own scripts or bots on someone elses channel

using clones – having multiple nicks on the same channels is known as using “clones” and is frowned upon by almost everybody. One nick is more than enough to chat with 🙂

excessive swearing – even adult channels have limits. If every other word you use is four-lettered slang, you are apt to offend people and maybe even get booted from the channel. Try to speak with some reserve. Remember you are in the public and being judged by only your words. Use lots of smileys :))) to indicate that you aren’t serious.

illegal activity – this should be an obvious one, but discussing illegal activity is a no-no of course.

Ok enough negativity … that should give you an idea of the things that are using poor judgement, now what SHOULD you do in an IRC channel?

GOOD things to do in IRC channnels

hello and goodbye – when entering the channel, unless some event is going on, it is considered polite to meet and and greet others as they enter and leave. Also when you leave it is a good idea to say goodbye instead of simply exiting the channel. If you are peered (means you are booted) people will understand that you can’t have said goodbye, of course 🙂

try and spark an interesting conversation – get involved with the topic of the channel, especially if the conversation is slow and try to start an interesting conversation.

network with others – introduce yourself and business and what you do and ask for advice if anybody has any and then LISTEN for people to respond. Try to form relationships with others in the business and make them mutually beneficial relationships. Some of the best relationships start by someone just speaking up instead of being basful

going “away” or afk – if you are going to be going away from the keyboard or be unavailable it is a good idea to change you nick to nick-away (replacing your nickname with the away) so people who talk to you might realize you aren’t accessible for chat at the moment.

camping good channels – if you find a channel that you like, show your support by trying to hang out (aka “camp”) while you work and participate during breaks in your work. The busiest channels often only get busier because everyone expects that channels with lots of people on it must be information, entertaining or interesting channels. With this said, don’t “sleep” camp multiple channels on the same server as this can be a resource burner and sysadmins will not like this. Sleep camping is when you leave your nick parked all the time, even when you are away from the keyboard.

I hope this helps lay out the terrain better for what IRC is basically all about. It may seem like a complicated place at first, but really if you just behave as you would in public on IRC you’ll find it is a new and exciting place to do some exciting networking. Also when there are events or trade shows if you are well known in the Webmaser IRC channels it will go further towards breaking the ice for real meetings with webmasters that can help catapult your career. Get to as many of these workshops as you can and attend the live radio shows to show your support for the people putting on these free (to you, not to them) webmaster events.

TDavid is co-owner, programmer and webmaster for several sites devoted to scripting including his own http://www.tdscripts.com/ His current projects include a new weekly tech radio show “2 Hours Of Tech with TDavid & Company” which airs live every Friday from 2-4pm PST. The show as well as prior archives can be accessed by visiting http://www.scriptschool.com/radio/ During the week you can often find TDavid in the script school IRC channel at http://www.scriptschool.com/commons/