IRC Client Setup

We are glad you decided to use an IRC client. We assume you've had no prior experience setting up an IRC Client, and do not currently have one.

We Fully recommend XChat as your IRC client of choice. It's full featured, secure and highly customizable. XChat has been built for nearly every platform on the planet, from Mac to Windows to every Unix with an X server and it's stability is unrivaled. It is for these reasons why we suggest XChat. We will cover the setup of XChat, as well as Chatzilla, Irssi, EPIC, and even Bitch-X.

Setup Tutorial for XChat found here.
Setup Tutorial for Chatzilla found here.
Setup Tutorial for Irssi found here.
Setup Tutorial for EPIC 4 found here.
Setup Tutorial for Bitch-X found here.
Setup Tutorial for UPP/mIRC found here.

Chatzilla

Chatzilla is an extension for Firefox Web Browser that allows for you to connect to an IRC server from the browser. Chatzilla for Firefox can be acquired by clicking Install Now on the Chatzilla Extension Page. Mozilla users, Chatzilla is built directly into Mozilla and can be accessed by pressing the IRC button on the bottom left under the status bar, or in the Tools menu.

If you don't already use Firefox as your default web browser, you should and you can download Firefox right here. Now once you have Firefox and the Chatzilla extension installed, you must restart Firefox and then select Chatzilla from Tools in the menu:

Once Chatzilla starts, you are presented with a rather dull looking unconnected page. Click on Chatzilla in the menu then Preferences:

Once the Chatzilla Preferences window opens, select the Startup Tab and click the Add button for the Auto-connect URLs section, the bottom section. A small popup will appear, in there enter

irc://irc.zoelife4u.org/jellopool/

or whatever room you want to join, such as FreeBSD or whatever. Example:

Press OK and now your Chatzilla Preferences window should now look like:

Press Apply then OK and the Preferences window will close and you'll be back to the dull, boring default Chatzilla Main Window. This being the first time we're connecting to the network, we'll just go ahead and manually connect to the server by typing:

 /server irc.zoelife4u.org

Press Enter and watch the connection process begin. Once connected just type

 /list

and then click on the room you wish to join. Note you will only have to manually enter the server name in and select the channel to join manually the first time you run Chatzilla Only... If you followed this tutorial correctly everytime you start Chatzilla from now on, it will automatically connect to the server and join the selected room. Enjoy using Chatzilla.

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There are of course hundereds of other IRC clients on the different platforms that exist, but these four are the clients we recommend and suggest to use. Why?? Because they're what we use and we've found that each are secure, customizable and ready to use with little effort and provide endless configuration possiblities. We by no means are saying the other clients are no good, are crap, or anything bad, we just have found these to be the better choices for the job. Though personally XChat is my personal favorite.

We hope you find this little tutorial helpful, as you can see it's not really too complicated to get an IRC client setup and running, and also something to note, you can use these client to also connect to other IRC networks, and meet a variety of different people from across the world. But we do want to keep you here at Zoelife4U.Org, so we hope you enjoy your stay with us and we hope to see you on the net soon.

--Jnbek

Last modified: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:58:43 -0700

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