How do I set up an IRC site?

[Bigby Findrake]

On Thu, 4 May 2006, Gary Kline wrote:

> 	Folks,
>
> 	I'm thinking of setting up an IRC page on my website so I
> 	can chat (live) with just a few people.  Are there any tutorials
> 	on this?  Othr than using GAIM and ymessenger, the last time I
> 	did live chat was circa 1991 with the write utility.  So beyond
> 	that, I'm clueless.

I use hybrid (http://ircd-hybrid.com/) for the ircd - I chose that for its 
reputed stability.  Hybrid's not the most featureful ircd out there, but 
it's been great to me.  I added on hybserv (http://www.hybserv.net/) for 
services.

For the web front-end part, I've tried several, from java clients to a cgi 
gateway.  pjirc (http://www.pjirc.com/about.php) is a very sweet java 
applet.  It's free, slick looking, very configurable (on the back/admin 
end) and very featureful as java clients go.

Some limitations of java clients is that your clients need network access 
to the irc server (some sites/networks/companies/etc. block irc access) 
and you need java (which not all browsers/OSes support).  That's why I 
also offer a cgi-to-irc (http://cgiirc.sourceforge.net/) gateway.  It's a 
bit clunky, but it allows people who can't use the java client (for one of 
the above reasons) to still connect to irc via the web.


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