Very new to this and wanting to figure it out. I have a message board and we would like to use IRC. Someone suggested MIRC. How do I go about being a host? I think that's the term I am looking for.

Thank you in advance!!!

mIRC is a program that you download and run on your computer. It has nothing to do with a message board as such. These message boards are here and have been set up by the mIRC team, Krejt most prominently, and are kept 'alive' by people who come and volunteer their time to help people. It is an official mIRC message board, but it has nothing to do with IRC itself in that it is not the same "Real time" format.

You can download mIRC here. You can then run it on *your* computer and connect to IRC with it..and have access to hundreds of thousands of other people around the world

I don't quite know what you mean by being a "host" for mIRC. Could you explain a little more?

Regards,

I think he means he wants to set up an ircd on his PC.

UnRealIRCd is probably the best free irc server available for windows. Give that a go.

[Edit] typical, its seems to be offline at the moment

Ok...with my neophyte knowledge about this, I'll try to explain better:

I downloaded mIRC. mIRC has to connect to a channel. How do I make the channel be for my own group of people?

Hope that helps

Hi cofeeiv,

The easiest way to achieve what you want is to pick a server, connect to it in mIRC and make a channel of your own. Just join a channel that does not exist yet and you will have @ status there.

Once you have a channel you can make it private, secret or set a password (key) for it. That allows you to control who can and can not join the channel. Needless to say if you only want your friends in the channel you will have to let them know where you are and on what network.

Hope this helps!

Best Regards,
Diz

"The easiest way to achieve what you want is to pick a server"

Can you tell me how to do this?

"connect to it in mIRC"

I think I saw directions for this.

"and make a channel of your own. Just join a channel that does not exist yet and you will have @ status there."

Not sure what that means, but I might "get it" if I do the first things first.

"Once you have a channel you can make it private, secret or set a password (key) for it. That allows you to control who can and can not join the channel. Needless to say if you only want your friends in the channel you will have to let them know where you are and on what network."

Ok. Gotcha!

Thank you!!!!

Another tid-bit of advise: After you select and join a "server" (AKA IRC network) and choose a channel to call home. Find the network Help channel (command: /list help ), works 90% of the time, there you will find people that would be able to assist you more in depth on securing your channel (registering) as the methods (services) are different on most networks. Furthermore most networks have a website with detailed information on how to navigate and set things up on their network.

You need to open mIRC, and type /server irc.server.address where irc.server.address is the address of a particular 'server' (the thing that you connect to to chat on IRC). When multiple servers are linked it's called a network, and the network has an official name - some of the biggest networks include Quakenet, EFnet, Undernet, IRCnet, and DALnet. More networks and information can be found here and here. More information on connecting to a server can be found on the How To Install page and useful links on the More Info page, which can be found on the navigation bar to the left.



An example of connecting to Undernet would be: /server irc.undernet.org. mIRC comes with a server list, just open the options dialog (press ALT+O or go to Tools > Options) and click on 'Connect' in the navigation bar to the left of that window. There's a drop down box there which lists a lot of servers.

Refer to some of the links above for more information, particularly the 'How To Install' page.



Again the links I posted above should give you some more insight as to what a channel is and how to join it. However, to reiterate here, a channel is just a chat room, where people go into to chat to each other. Once someone joins a channel that nobody is in they gain "Op" status, which means they have certain tools to moderate the channel (i.e. kick people out, ban people, set modes, op/voice others, change the topic etc.). When someone is opped, they will get a little '@' symbol next to their nickname. So when you see someone say "Get @" it means "Get op status"

You may also want to look at the basic Commands List which should give you an idea of how to set modes, change topics, do actions and more.

As was said previously, it's a good idea to /join #Help (which is usually the help channel on most networks) and seek help there.

Hope this helps s'more

Regards,