Enter some details about yourself. The Alternative field tells mIRC what to set your Nickname to, if the Nickname you have specified is already in use when you connect to the server. Note that Nicknames cannot contain spaces. The Invisible setting means that users will not be able to see your online status by doing a /WHO on the server.
When you are done, click the Servers node on the left.
You will see a list of all the IRC servers you can connect to. Since Communicate is not already in the list, it will need to be added. Click the Add button to continue:
You can type all the details exactly as is portrayed above, or you can type your own descriptive text for the Description and Group fields. The Group field is used for IRC networks with more than one server. Since communicate only has one server, just set that field to Communicate. It is extremely important that you leave the IRC Server and Ports fields set to the ones shown above!
Do not worry about the Password field right now. Communicate does not currently require a password to connect.
When you are finished, click OK. You will be immediately redirected back to the Connect screen, except that the Server: field will now be set to the server you just added. (If you are not automatically taken back to the Connect screen, click the Select button to the right of the list of servers)
Click OK to connect to the IRC server. If all is well, you will be connected. If this does not work, you will have to do more troubleshooting. If you are in a corporate network, it is likely that you will have to specify a Firewall to connect through. If you suspect this to be the case, kindly contact your network administrator.
Once connected, the mIRC Favourites window will appear:
mIRC provides this window for you, which is pre-filled with some popular channels (chatrooms) that you might like to join. You can remove the default channels and/or add your own, if you would like.
The problem with this list, however, is that you cannot be sure that the channels in your Favourites folder will actually exist on the server at the time you connect. Because of the dynamic nature of IRC, anytime you try and join a channel that does not exist, it is created, with you as the first member! (When the last member leaves a channel, it is destroyed again). Right now, we're only interested in finding existing channels to join. Click OK to dismiss the mIRC Favourites Folder.
To find a list of channels that currently exist on the server, type /list and then press <ENTER>. The channels listing will be displayed*:
To join a channel, double-click it in the list!
What if you already know the name of the channel you wish to join?
Simple! Type /join #channelname and press <ENTER>. Remember that channel names cannot contain spaces. As mentioned above, if you channel you wish to join does not already exist, it will be created, with you as the first member.
* Note that the screenshot of the channels listing was taking on mIRC version 6.3 (also known as 6.30). The only difference in the screen on mIRC 6.31 is that the icon is different.
