User blog:Ruin Cireela/The New Shoutbox (NOT READY YET)

The Shoutbox
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Summary
irc.quakenet.org, channel #avatar_wiki

What is IRC
Ok, first off, IRC. its essentially an IM with many more capabilities. Also, it is more or less a chat room, with being able to talk to everybody at the same time, in one conversation. In other words, if you want to have a conversation with someone that is off topic of the blog post that brought it up, you can take it in there. Plus no more spamming F5 for a response.

This is also great tool to contribute to the wiki with, easy information exchange makes for efficient wiki pages.

Its free and fairly simple to set up.

Downloading and Install
First off you need to download a client, there are many different clients available, but we found mIRC to be a simple and effective client, which can be found HERE Just click download MIRC, it will be free and after 30 days you will have to watch an add for a few seconds before you can log in, but it's still free.

When starting it will ask you to register, ignore that, just click continue or cancel (something like that), after that point use this guide HERE (there's also an install guide on mIRC's page, but it doesn't include changing server address).

Now there are slight differences from those screens and the current version. The only one really is The earth with # is a heart instead. Same button, different Icon.

First thing is to put in your name and email (these 2 could be anything), nickname, you can leave alternative blank. Then on the left side its says connect, and inside it should say server. Click that and the menu on the right would change to a list of servers. You want to go to the QUAKENET server and inside that click random server.

Hit ok and you should connect to the server, from there a pop up should appear asking which channel you want. Type in Avatar_Wiki in the empty bar at the top, hit ok and there you go

Other Clients
For those who use other clients such as chatzilla or Opera, our server address is: idsoftware.ca.us.quakenet.org

and our channel name is #Avatar_Wiki

@
If you see a user with @ in front of their names, they are Operators, essentially admins. They are there to protect the room, not kick you just because you disagree, don't worry about speaking your mind.

Emote
To emote type /me (your emote)

An example: Which comes out as
 * /me thinks that IRC is awesome
 * JayBo thinks that IRC is awesome

Minimizing
If you minimize mIRC, it does not drop down to the start bar. It minimizes into the Tool Tray, the Tool Tray is found on the right side of your start bar, next to your clock.

There will be a mIRC icon in there, double click to restore your window.

Change your nick
You can change your nickname inside the IRC chat box, some people do this to show they are away, in example Jaybo|Away.

To do so, simply type /nick (desired name) and hit return. denote you input, do not actually write them.

Highlighting Alerts
This is probably the best thing to do, IRC makes no noise, so its hard to notice when someones talking to you and you are in your browser instead of IRC. So, to add a noise, press the alt + B keys to open a menu. [http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t23/JayBo_13/wiki/irchighlight.jpg There in is a tab called Highlight. Enable the tick box] and then click ADD.

Enter in the text the word which triggers an alert/highlight, in this case your IRC name. Choose a color, and then click no sound, it will change to "beep", beep never worked for me, so if you click it again, you can choose any sound file on your computer, as if you were opening a picture. Supported formats are .mp3, .wav, and .midi. If you don't have any sound files I suggest you go HERE to download one.

Once you have that selected, hit ok and you are set, now whenever someone says your name in IRC, it will be in your selected color, and will make the sound that you have selected, alerting you to the message.