Alright, first things first...download an IRC client. For the purpose of this guide, going to use mIRC. Why mIRC? Because it's simple and doesn't have a bunch of crap bloat that anyone would need anyway.

Download it here.

First you install it obviously, then after it's installed open the mirc.exe.

Next we'll have to add the Stardock server to the server list. Just follow the screenshots and you should be fine.

Click on the little hammer icon thingie at the top left, this is the mIRC Options. The Connect section should come up, enter in your details there. Full name and email address don't really matter, you can put any kind of nonsense you want there. For your Nickname I suggest using your Stardock login name. No spaces, if you want spaces you'll have to use an underscore. For the alternative, something similar (this is used when you get disconnected and your nick is still in use).



The click on the Servers area and the Add button. Then fill out the information accordingly. After that press Add.



Now we're going to setup the Perform on Connect settings, with this you will automatically join the channels and identify to nickserv once you connect. Click on the Options section under Servers, then click on Perform. Make sure the Enable perform on connect is checked. Now click on the Add button, find the Stardock server we just added and then select Ok. Now select Stardock from the Network dropbox. In the textarea, add the following information as shown in the screenshot, the click Ok at the bottom.

Notes:

• The first line identifies you to your registered nickname (if you choose to register it [explained below], if you don't register it then you don't need to add the command).
• The next two commands automatically join you to the #wincustomize and #stardock channels. You can add or remove whatever channels from autojoin if you want. If you want a list of other channels, type /list in the status window.
• The last line disables the server's language filter. The language filter prevents anyone from sending you a private message that contains swearing. Personally I tend to swear like a sailor so I find this little feature annoying and silly, so I have it disabled.

Before we connect, I'm going to show some optional settings I find useful. Click on IRC in the menu list. I would suggest checking Prefix own messages, Show mode prefix, Whois on Query, Rejoin channels when kicked, Rejoin channels on connect, and Keep channels open. This way is for some reason you get kicked (hey it happens) mIRC will automatically have you rejoin the channel without you having to manually do it. Keep channels open just keeps the channel there when you get kicked/banned, normally the channel would close and disappear and you'd have to rejoin it.

Also, click on the Options section still under IRC, and under Show: check User addresses (you'll be able to see the isp the person is connecting from) and under Flash on: check Query message (this way when someone sends you a pm, the window will flash in the taskbar to notify you). If you go to IRC > Messages, you can enable the Timestamp. Check Enabled and then you can edit the display. I'm using [ddd h:nn:ss TT] which displays as [Tue 5:18:34 PM]. You can change how it's displayed by changing the identifiers. You can find a list of those identifers Here or in mIRC go to Help > Contents and in the Index search type "time" and the first thing listed should be the Time and Date Identifiers.

Next I'd go down to Display, click on it, then make sure always highlight and blink icons are checked, this way the windows inside mIRC will flash to notify you that there has been a new message in the chat/pm window.

Speaking of display, by default mIRC uses the lame Fixedsys font but this can easily be changed by going to View > Font. I use Verdana size 8. You can change the fonts on a per channel/window basis pretty much, but I have mine set globally.

Now we can connect. You can do this a few ways. The first would be to find the Stardock server we added in the servers list and then click on the Connect to Server button near the bottom of that window. Otherwise you could just type this into the text area at the bottom of the screen.

/server irc.stardock.com

You should now be connected to the server and have joined #wincustomize and #stardock. You can now register your nick if you choose to do so. To do this type the following (without the brackets of course).

/nickserv register [yourpasshere] [youremail]

You should then get a message from Nickserv saying the nick has been registered to you. Now go back to the options and go to the perform window, enter your password in the settings as we showed above. This way when you connect you will be automatically identified to Nickserv.

If you get disconnected for any reason and your nick is still showing up in the channel, you can kill it so you can use it again. To do this use the following command:

/nickserv ghost [yournick] [yourpass]

You can now use your nick again. To change your nick, just use /nick [newnick]

Another thing you should do is add your hostmask to the Nickserv access list so you won't get Guested if you fail to identify to Nickserv for whatever reason. First you will need to find your hostmask, to do this perform the following command:

/whois [yournick]

After you've gotten the whois result, copy the ident@host (highlight it, mIRC will automatically copy anything that is highlighted) and then do the following command.

/nickserv access add *!*ident@host

Example: Say my whois result showed this for my host (IP address edited of course): ~supervixen@cpe-255-255-255-255.socal.res.rr.com. Now if your IP tends to be dynamic and change a lot, you might want to edit it when you add to the access list. This is how I added mine:
/nickserv access add *!*supervixen@*.socal.res.rr.com

That's pretty much it for the basic setup. mIRC has a ton of other options and settings you can play with, just look around. One I use frequently is the Colors option (click on the Address Book icon next to the clock and select the Colors tab). Here you can colorize your own name, friend's names, and user modes (ops @nick [usually Stardock employees and/or WC mods/admins], voices +nick [special people], channel owner .nick etc). This makes it easier to spot who is chatting in the window. It should be pretty self-explanatory to get it working, but I'll give some examples anyway.

Go into the Colors option like I explained above, make sure Enabled is checked, and then click on Add. On the left is how it looks to color my own nick. This way whenever I say something in the chat and in the userlist, my name shows up as pink. On the right is how it looks to color all ops as bright green (I use a black background).



You can also change the color theme for how your mIRC is displayed. As I mentioned, I use a black background because it's easier on my eyes. Just click on the Crayons icon to mess around with the colors. Just click on whatever you want to change and select a new color. To change the background color just click on any of the white space. Here is how mine looks:



One of the other features I use a lot is Highlight. If you go to Options > IRC > Highlight, you can set it up there. What highlight does is what it says, if it finds a match for something in the highlight list, it will change the color of that entire line to whatever color you set, and can also beep to notify you. To use this, make sure Enabled is checked, then click on Add to add your highlight trigger. I have highlight set for whenever someone says my name. Here is how mine looks:

Additional Commands

Often you will see people talking in third person, this is done using the \me command (I had to use backwards slash because the forums parse it the other way). Example:

\me waves hello (don't forget to use forward slash!)

Will be displayed as: * BebiBulma waves hello

If you need to go away for a while, you can use the /away command. This way when someone does a /whois on you or sends you a pm, they will get a notice in their status window that you are away.
/away Gone out, be back soon

To disable the away, simply type /away and it turns it off.

Perhaps you want to ask someone something but not in the public channel, then you can use the /query command. However, it's always a good idea to ask someone first before you pm them, it can be irritating to have someone pm you just because they can without any real reason. Tip: If you type the first few letters of someone's nick and then press Tab, it will go down the list of names of all that match.

/query Nick Hi there, nice day?

If you need further help with this, you can post a comment here. Also, you might want to check out this IRC tutorial for a more lengthy guide on the commands and other features IRC has. If there are other features I didn't cover but someone would like more info on, let me know and I'll see what I can add. Come chat with us on IRC!

*For these screenshots, I'm using the Argos premium suite.