How to Build a Chat Room

For years the Internet's standard for chat rooms has been Internet Relay Chat (IRC). This protocol and the myriad servers running it allow for the quick and easy creation and management of chat rooms around the world.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• IRC client

Building Your Chat Room

1. Acquire an IRC client for your operating system. You cannot connect to an IRC server easily without one. An IRC client will handle all the background information for you. mIRC is popular for Windows users while Irssi is popular among Mac OS X and Linux users. There are dozens of clients to choose from, and all will work relatively similarly.

2. Choose the server you want your chat room to be on. Each server uses slight code variations to provide users with different features. Servers are often grouped into interest such a Freenode for technology of DALnet and EFnet for general chat. SearchIRC.com shows lists of servers and their interests.

3. Configure your IRC client and connect to the server you chose and use the "/join #YourChatRoomsName" command to open a chat channel of your choice. If you see no one but yourself in the chat room, then it is probably unreserved and you can use that name.

4. Most servers have a service called ChanServ to make channels permanent. Message ChanServ with "/msg chanserv help" to find the commands that server's ChanServ requires to register your channel.

5. Inform others where your channel is located or add a JavaScript IRC client to your Web page so that people can connect without having to download an IRC client.

Tips & Warnings

• Use "/topic YourTopic" to set the topic of your chat room. You can make others administrators in the chat room by using the "/op TheirName" command.

References

• IRCHelp.org Channel Operator Guide

Resources

• SearchIRC
• mIRC
• Irssi