IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat and is a common form of chat used by people all over the world. It can be quite intimidating at first, unlike many IM clients, there are commands to learn and acronyms are much more readily used than on IM chats.

These added complications have not diminished IRC's popularity though, millions of people across the world access the thousands of chat networks across the globe, each with potentially thousands of chat channels covering every subject on the planet.

The default format of IRC chat rooms are that of channels on an IRC network, each channel can hold hundreds if not thousands of chatters and each network they are hosted on can host thousands of channels. In each channel meet all the chatters, so primarily it is a group chat enviroment but you can easily have a private one to one chat with other users if you want. If you require certain users to chat together you can create a room or channel instantly and invite those friends into it.

The good thing about IRC is it's flexibilty and although confusing at first, the commands available give a user some real umph to get things done and even build their own community for free. Bots can be programmed (and many of these programs are free to use) to help run a channel, keep unwanted elements out and even play games. If you use Mirc, as this tutorial is aimed at using, then there are free scripts you can use to defend yourself from attacks from malicious users, configure the look of the program and much much more. IRC is a great enviroment to start chatting in.