/blg/ IRC Quickstart Guide

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Created June 2023

Welcome to the #Bluey Channel. If you're new to IRC then this will be a sufficient introduction.

IRC is short for Internet Relay Chat, a chat protocol that came about in 1988. It has remained the 
ubiquitous method of talking to people over the internet in real time because of it's extremely low 
resource usage, relative anonymity, and ease of use. No matter if your computer is still running win95 
or if you have dial-up, IRC will be able to send and recieve messages in real time.

When most people connect to IRC for the first time they connect through a webclient, which is a natural 
thing for users to do nowadays. This destroys most of the benefits of IRC in one fell swoop, so using 
webclients longterm isn't a sustainable nor reccomended practice. Therefore, the first step in using IRC 
is to install an IRC client.

#### HEXCHAT INSTALL & CONNECTION ####
There are many, MANY choices due to IRC's simplicity, but the most popular options are HexChat and irssi. 
Hexchat is a graphical client that runs on many systems and irssi is a graphical client that works on even
more. Depending on your usecase or personal desires, choose the one that fits you. I'll be providing 
HexChat specific instructions for Windows because the GUI interface isn't well represented in online 
tutorials (most assume you are using a terminal client on Linux). More technical users should follow 
along their own OS/platform specific instructions.

1. Install hexchat through either the website (https://hexchat.github.io/downloads.html) or through 
   chocolatey if you have that installed on Windows Powershell (>choco install hexchat)
2. Go to the network list, highlight "Rizon" and click "Edit..."
3. Click the portion that says "irc.rizon.net/6667" and set it to "irc.rizon.net/6697"
4. Check "Use SSL for all the servers on this network" and uncheck "Use global user information"
5. Set your Nickname (which will be your display name) to something that isn't any previously used 
   username or anything connected to real life. Please avoid keysmash as that is both unoriginal and 
   annoying to type.
6. Set your real name to something that isn't your real name. keysmash is acceptable here as it is only 
   used to identify you to the network. Likewise with the user name, do not use any self identifying 
   stuff.

#### REGISTRATION AND VHOST CREATION ####
Your Login method and Password isn't important now, but will be in a little. 
Connect to IRC and register your nickname through the following method:
In the login screen (the one that says Rizon in ansi art), enter the following command:
>/msg NickServ REGISTER [yourPassword] [your@email.address]
It is "better" to use a real email, but a temporary one will do fine. Check said email then after 
getting the conformation code, enter it in the client:
>/msg NickServ CONFIRM [ConfirmationCodeFromEmail]
You can now use this nick exclusively and can identify upon connecting with this command:
>/IDENTIFY [yourPassword]
Other information such as releasing your nick and automatic authentification can be found here: 
<https://wiki.rizon.net/index.php?title=Register_your_nickname>

Now that you have a nickname, you ought to make a vHost for yourself. The reason for this is because upon 
connecting, everyone's client will print something like this:
"* nickname (username@Rizon-8B9DF933.sub-174-197-6.myvzw.com) has joined"
This pretty much gives everyone information on where you're connecting from and isn't preferable. A vHost 
is something you choose to mask your actual host. For example, our resident bot is identified as 
"4WareZ@4WareZ.on.rizon.net" instead of where he is being hosted from. To set your own, go over the rules 
at <https://wiki.rizon.net/index.php?title=VHost> and then type in the command:
>/msg HostServ REQUEST [vhost.goes.here]
It will take some time to get approved (a few minutes in my experience), but after you have been notified 
of its approval type:
>/msg HostServ ON

At this point, you are pretty much done with all the "hard" stuff and will never have to do it again as 
long as you remember your password (write it down!) and log in regularly. you can type /join #Bluey to 
join the channel and can start talking. But one feature that doesn't come standard with IRC is chat 
history; when you leave an IRC channel, you miss the messages posted when you weren't there. There are a 
few ways of getting chat history, but the most convenient way is to request a bouncer from Rizon 
themselves.

#### RIZON BOUNCER ####

A bouncer is an instance of a BNC that, simply put, stays logged into the channels you join constantly 
to catch the messages posted then serve them to you once you log back into the bouncer. The catch is you 
must wait seven days to the hour to apply for a bouncer, so if you are in a hurry you can either launch 
a remote vm to host BNC software or look into free shells to ssh into. Other than that, here's how you 
request a bouncer with rizon:

1. Wait seven days (lol)
2. Identify with your nick using the previous command
3. Join #RizonBNC (/join #RizonBNC)
4. Send this command in the channel: /msg RizonBNC request [EU/US] (choose EU or US depending on where 
   you live)
5. Wait a while for your bouncer to be approved
6. Type in /msg MemoServ READ LAST when you recieve the message

At this point you will recieve a message from MemoServ stating something like this:
"It is with great pleasure that we inform you that your BNC application has been APPROVED. To log on to 
your BNC, connect to rizonbnc.[us/eu].rizon.net on port +[port] using SSL with the server password 
'[nick]:[passwd]'. Thank you for flying Rizon!"

Now that you have a bouncer, change your Rizon connection configuration in Hexchat by going into the 
network list (CTRL+s) and changing the given fields as such:
1. Switch "irc.rizon.net/6697" to "rizonbnc.[eu/us].rizon.net/[port]"
2. Check "Connect to this network automatically" if you haven't already
3. Set Login Method to "Server password (/PASS password)"
4. Set Password to "[nick]:[passwd]"

And that is pretty much everything! Now you have constant access to #Bluey and any other channel on 
Rizon of your choosing. This is just the basics of getting started with IRC and any other questions 
can be asked in #Bluey.

Sources:
https://wiki.rizon.net/index.php?title=Register_your_nickname
https://wiki.rizon.net/index.php?title=SASL#SASL_PLAIN_Client_Configurations
https://wiki.rizon.net/index.php?title=VHost
https://wiki.rizon.net/index.php?title=RizonBNC_FAQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BNC_(software)?useskin=vector
https://quadpoint.org/articles/irssi/
https://koshka.love/irc/help.html

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