If you’re a vet to this IRC thing, just point your client at irc.boredirc.com and commence idling already.
If you’re new, there’s two real ways to get started:
- Open this web-based chat to get started. Put in a real nickname and then just press Connect. You’re now on IRC!
- Pick a desktop client (for Windows, mIRC, Chatzilla, and X-Chat are popular; for Linux there’s X-Chat and irssi; and for Mac OS X I think there’s Colloquy and also X-Chat yet again) and install it. Put in irc.boredirc.com for server, 6667 for port, and your choice of nick. #bored is the “network recommended” default channel though there are others. Connect and you’re done!
And now some technical details:
- irc.boredirc.com is a rotator (choosing effectively randomly) between the three actual servers – irc.boredicons.com, irc.durd.net, irc.twigathy.com. If one server is giving you problems try another, but the rotator should be used whenever possible in case one drops out of existence temporarily (and this does happen)
- Servers listen on ports 6667 and 8067 for IRC connections. If the server supports SSL, SSL connections can be made to port 6697. As of this writing I believe only irc.boredicons.com supports SSL.
- Services are running ircservices and are located on the same box as irc.boredicons.com, so if that one goes down services go with it. It seems to have the best uptime, though.