About freenode: Using the Network

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Using the Network

To access the freenode IRC servers, you'll first need an IRC client. Text clients include ircII, bitchx, epic, and sirc. Graphical clients include xchat for Unix and GNU/Linux, and mIRC for Windows. Packages for various IRC clients may be included on your operating system install CDs and links to web sites for the client software can be found here.

Once you have a client, you'll need a server. You can simply use irc.freenode.net to reach our main rotation of servers; or, you can find a more geographically-local server here.

After you've obtained your client and the name of a server, you may still need a bit of help in getting connected. Take a look at this tutorial or this IRC primer on irchelp.org, which contains a variety of other useful information as well.

freenode provides nickname and channel registration services. These should be used to avoid disagreements about nickname use and to maintain clear operational control of channels. You must register your nickname to register a channel or to be added to its access list. If you'd like to register a channel here, remember that we are a special purpose network devoted to peer-directed projects. If you're running a software project, please be sure to take a look at our licensing policy before registering your channel.

For general information on nickname or channel registration services, use "/msg nickserv help" or "/msg chanserv help". For specific information on registration, use "/msg nickserv help" or "/msg chanserv help".

We strongly suggest that you avoid configuring your channel to "auto-op". Use the chanserv "op" command to obtain channel operator status only when needed. This will help to keep your channel temperature low.

Help us contact you in emergencies by adding channel staff to your channel access list via "/msg chanserv access #channelname add [nick] [level]". [nick] must be registered, and a [level] value of 5 is customary, and sufficient to allow opping and deopping.

The following is a list of dancer-ircd 1.0 user modes:

+C (block CTCP)	This umode prevents you from receiving personal CTCP messages or sending any CTCP replies. This will stop private CTCP flooding. You'll still receive CTCP messages sent to a channel you are on, although the network will block your response to them.
+e (identified user)	You have identified yourself to NickServ.
+E (block unidentified)	This umode prevents private messages from people who have not identified themselves to NickServ. They'll be told that their messages are bouncing.
+i (invisible)	This prevents you from appearing in global WHO/WHOIS by normal users, and hides which channels you are on. It is strongly recommended that you set this umode.
+I (block invite)	This umode prevents anybody from inviting you to a channel. Running with this option can be used to block invite flooding, but it also limits you to channels for which no invitation is required.
+w (see wallops)	This umode lets you see the wallops announcement system. Important network messages will be sent out via global notices; this is only for noncritical announcements and comments which may be of interest.

The following is a list of dancer-ircd 1.0 channel modes. Where a feature is currently described as experimental, network staff may need to enable the feature for your channel.

+b (channel ban)	Bans take one parameter, either in the form +b nick!user@host, or in the experimental form, +b nick!user@host!#channel. The wildcards * and ? are allowed, matching zero-or-more, and exactly-one characters respectively. The masks will be trimmed to fit the maximum allowable length for the relevant element, with wildcards added as appropriate to ensure that they still match. Without a !#channel, the mask causes any matching user to be prohibited from sending to the channel, knocking, or joining. Having +v set on them on the channel overrides the prohibition on sending, while being invited overrides the prohibition on joining. If the mask has a channel name specified and the channel has +F set, then in all situations where the user would previously have been told they could not join the channel, they will instead join the channel named in the ban mask, and be sent a 379 numeric describing the forward.
+c (color filter)	This cmode activates the colour filter for the channel. This filters out bold, underline, reverse video, beeps, mIRC colour codes, and ANSI escapes. Note that escape sequences will usually leave cruft sent to the channel, just without the escape characters themselves.
+d (realname ban)	This mode takes one parameter, a mask which is matched against the so-called "Real Name" field each client supplies, and prevents any matching clients from sending to the channel or joining it. It accepts the standard * and ? wildcards.
+e (ban exemption)	This mode takes one parameter of the form nick!user@host, with the usual wildcards, which overrides +b and +d bans for all clients it matches.
+f (forward on uninvited)	This experimental feature is specified with some channel name #foo. When specified on a +i channel (invite-only), users who try to join the channel and are not in the invite-only exemption list (+I) are automatically sent to channel #foo. Clients receive a 379 numeric message which lists the original and the target channels.
+F (enable forwarding)	freenode staff can use this mode to enable the experimental channel forwarding features.
+i (invite-only)	No client can join this channel unless they are listed in the invite exemption list (+I).
+I (invite-only exemption)	This mode takes a parameter of the form nick!user@host with the usual wildcards. When the channel is invite-only, clients which match entries in this list can join the channel whether invited or not.
+j (jupe channel)	This mode is used by freenode staff to prevent a channel from being used.
+k (channel password)	This mode sets up a channel password. To enter the channel, you must specify the password on your JOIN command.
+l (join limit)	Specified with a numeric value, this mode limits the number of users who can join your channel.
+m (moderated)	When a channel is set +m, only users with +o or +v on the channel can send to it.
+n (prevent external send)	Users outside the channel may not send messages to it.
+p (deprecated)	Traditionally, this option made a channel "private," i.e., users could see it on a channel listing as <prv> but could not see the channel name or the members. This option currently acts the same as +s (secret channel) and will be removed in a future version of the server.
+P (permanent channel)	This mode is an experimental feature which currently may only be set by freenode staff. Once set, the channel will not be deleted when it becomes empty. Additionally, the +b, +e and +I lists have higher capacity to make channel forwarding easier. NOTE: In dancer-ircd 1.0, permanent channels can still be erased by catastrophic network failures.
+q (quiet user)	This mode works like +b (ban user), but instead simply quiets the user. It is currently equivalent to a +b whose masked is prefaced by the percent sign (for example, "+b %foo" is equivalent to "+q foo").
+s (secret channel)	This channel will not appear on channel lists or WHO or WHOIS output unless you are on it.