For those of you new to this whole ‘online’ thing, there’s more to it than just online forums and online gaming. We here at CSG like to use something called Internet Relay Chat (IRC for short). IRC is basically a chat room, or as some members call it, multiplayer notepad.

If you’re still reading this, you’re wondering

how you can connect to our IRC channel. There is a myriad of programs you can use to connect to the channel. Here’s a short list for you. Take your pick.

mIRC – IRC client program (Windows)

XChat – IRC client program (Windows/Linux)

Trillian – Multi-protocol chat client. Works with MSN/Yahoo/AIM/IRC/GoogleTalk (Windows)

Colloquy – IRC client program (Mac OS X)

Conversation – IRC client program (Mac OSX)

After you’ve decided which client you’re going to use you need to configure it to connect to the CSG channel.

Server: irc.adelais.net:6667

Channel: #csg

Some common commands you’ll have to run once you get it up and running are

/nick – Set your nickname

/msg nickserv register PASSWORD EMAIL – register your nickname so only you can use it. This is server specific and won’t transfer between different IRC servers.

/msg nickserv identify PASSWORD – identify yourself when you connect to the server

/join CHANNEL – join a channel. For us, this is #csg (all IRC channels start with a ‘#’)

A lot of clients can automate this for you so that connecting to our channel is just as easy as signing into your other instant messenger clients. See you there.