Terms you should know in IRC

op: Ops, or Channel Operators, are the channel's mods. They have considerable power within a room including the ability to ban users who are misbehaving. Be especially polite to channel operators. Most clients will display ops and other dignitaries in some fashion to make them obvious. There maybe a symbol next to their name (eg: @) or a coloured button next to it instead.
Half-op: Basically the same as an op.
IRC operator: If ops are the moderators, then IRCops are the supermods. They control the whole server (or network, see below).
IRC admin: Essentially they are the gods of the server.
channel: Channels are like other chat 'rooms'. They are a virtual rooms which you can join and chat to some of the other users on a server. Channels usually have a set topic or purpose.
flood: Sending many lines of text in a short period of time. Don't do it.
IRC bot: A bot is just a client running a script that interacts with the the users in various ways (anything from updating them with news headlines, channel statistics, speaking with a limited AI etc) NickServ is a bot, as is ChanServ.
IRC Server: A computer that is running IRC server software that allows users to connect and create channels to chat in.
IRC network: Sometimes multiple servers are joined together in a network to help distribute the load. Toribash has another server with the name asia.toribash.com: connecting to this server will allow you to join all the same channels and chat with the same people as if you had connected to irc.toribash.com.
netsplit: sometimes the servers in an IRC network stop working in harmony. The technical details aren't important. Basically if you are in irc.toribash.com and there is a netsplit, you stop being able to communicate with users on asia.toribash.com and vice-versa. They are easily identified when half the room vanishes at once, see this pic for an example.
kick: Someone with certain powers (eg., ops) can kick a user out of a room. They can still rejoin, though doing so straight-away annoys some ops - so be careful.
kill: Usually reserved for higher-ups such as IRCops, this will disconnect a user from the whole server.
ban: Pretty self-explanatory. A banned user can either not rejoin the channel until the ban is lifted. Ban evasion does not impress the powers that be, so don't bother trying.
k-line: k-line is used to ban a user from a server, permanently or just temporarily. If you are k-lined from irc.toribash.com you can still join asia.toribash.com. The k means kill.
g-line: g-line is a special form of k-line. The g stands for global and it means that the user will be banned from all servers on the network.
NickServ: A bot who selflessly looks after the administration of nicknames.
ChanServ: Another administration bot that looks after channels. ChanServ can be set to auto-op certain users (usually requires having registered a nick with NickServ and successfully identifying yourself), and keep channels open (visible in the /list) even when there are no users in them.
Channel 0: For historical reasons, joining Channel 0 (no '#' sign) will disconnect you from all channels (but not the server). In the olden days (80s and early 90s) channels didn't have names - just numbers.

Channel modes

I mentioned channel modes earlier. You will often see letters after a channel name. For example, after the #toribash channel name if you type /list you will see +Cntr. These are basically settings for the channel that you should be aware of. Here are some of the common ones:

p = Private channel
s = Secret channel
i = Invite-only allowed
m = Moderated channel, Only users with mode +voh can speak.
n = No messages from outside channel
t = Only Channel Operators may set the topic
r = Channel is Registered
R = Requires a Registered nickname to join the channel
O = IRC Operator only channel (Settable by IRCops)
k = Needs the Channel Key to join the channel
H = No +I users may join (Settable by Admins)
N = No Nickname changes are permitted in the channel.
G = Makes the channel G Rated. Any bad words are replaced with in channel messages (badwords.channel.conf).
C = No CTCPs allowed in the channel.
z = Only Clients on a Secure Connection (SSL) can join.

courtesy of this page

Clients


Windows


Chatzilla

Chatzilla is cross-platform (Linux and Mac Users can also use it) and is very easy to setup. It is principally run as a firefox extension (though you can install it with any mozilla-type browser such as...Mozilla), you can download it here, you will need to restart firefox. It can be accessed from the Tools menu.



You can just enter the normal commands here as discussed earlier. After entering a channel you will be faced with a standard irc layout with your various windows tabbed at the bottom and the user list on the left. Before you do that, you should learn about your preferences. Go to the menus at the top and select Chatzilla->Preferences.



You can set a whole bunch of things up here, explore the tabs and see what's going on. A lot of the options may seem like nonsense but for the most part you can ignore them. Once you have had a look through, and made any changes (I suggest you at least fill out the identification details). Over on the left you will see that the preferences are labelled "Global Settings". If/When you are in a channel it will also list them underneath the Global Settings and Server Name labels.

Another useful thing worth taking a look at in preferences is when you have connected to a server, underneath "Global Settings" if you select the server name (eg., irc.toribash.com) there is at least one immediately useful field: It is called Auto Perform and is located in the Lists tab. You can add commands here that you want to automatically entered upon connecting to that server. This can be great for identifying yourself to NickServ. Simply click 'Add' and type /msg NickServ identify <password> which should save you some time (not a good idea if you are sharing computer login accounts with somebody else since they would be able to login to irc and use your protected name for mischief - also the password will be plainly visible and readable to anyone sat at your computer so be aware).

mIRC

There is already a fine tutorial on setting up mIRC so it would be redundant to make another one. mIRC is a very popular and long-running client. There are a ton of websites out there with extra help, scripts and other useful resources. With that in mind, mIRC might be the best client to start with. There will be a wealth of people in the channel using it, and so if you have a quick question about it you are more likely to get a response. mIRC can be downloaded here


leafChat

But if you are wanting something a little different you can try any of the other clients mentioned above or this gem (download) might be worth a viewing. The setup is easy to follow, it asks you for your nick, your quit messages etc. Just go through these adding what details you like. All of these things can be changed later.



To connect simply click 'Connect' and a Connect window (or tab if you selected Tabbed View in the setup) will open. Type in irc.toribash.com and click the connect button over on the right hand side.

As you will see there is a handy box for typing in your IRC commands. Type /join #toribash in here (or just use the handy dandy 'join' button!) and you will be in the toribash channel in no time. One good thing about leafChat is that while you are in other channels (or going through options etc), it makes a little popup on the taskbar telling you what is being said in the other channels.

Customizing can be done via the Options button. There are a few themes (and I'm being generous here, I only found 2), but you can configure the colours with ease from in the options window should you wish

Likewise scripts/plug-ins are possible, but already written ones are not easily found on the web.

leafChat isn't the ultimate IRC client when it comes to lots of user-generated content, but for simple every day usage it is absolutely fantastic and highly recommended. If you want something a little different give it a go.



You can set it to automatically join channels upon connecting to a server through the 'Join Button'. Select the Favourite Channels tab, and just select the Auto-join checkbox.