ZNC

SoylentNews runs its own IRC bouncer (ZNC) for staff use.

What is an IRC bouncer?

An IRC bouncer is benign. It acts as your proxy to IRC servers of your choice, a concierge if you will. While you are away, the bouncer stays connected to all your IRC networks and channels as your representative then (optionally) tells you everything that went on while you were away.

Rather than your connection to an IRC server being client >> IRC server(s) it becomes client >> Bouncer >> IRC server(s). The nice thing is the bouncer never sleeps so Bouncer >> IRC server(s) is always maintained, the client can come and go at will. When you reconnect your IRC client to the Bouncer you can (optionally) get scrollback for all the channels you were in prior to your client disconnection.

What is ZNC?

ZNC is a popular IRC bouncer. See ZNC Along with psyBNC these two are the most commonly used IRC Bouncers. psyBNC seems unmaintained right now unfortunately.

Setting up ZNC - for Staff

Assumptions at this point are that you have a SoylentNews IRC nick, have it registered with nickserv, have an irc client (rather than using the web interface) and are SN staff.. so let's get on with the nuts and bolts...

• An IRC Admin will notify you of your ZNC username and initial password.
• Go to SN ZNC Web Interface with a web browser and login with your shiny new ZNC credentials.
• Go to Your Settings in the right hand menu and change you password in the subsequent screen by populating the Password and Confirm password fields, scroll all the way down and hit Save.
• Probably want to go ahead and Logout & log back in with your new password at this point.

• Return to Your Settings and populate the IRC Information section (same kind of info you'd use in an IRC client).
• Scroll down to the Modules section - as a minimum you probably want chansaver and ctcpflood checked, you may want to check some of the others n.b. the name of each module is clickable to bring up a ZNC wiki page on what they each do.
• Further down the page still, in Flags - you probably want to check Prepend Timestamps - this prepends played back messages with their time/date on client reconnection after a time away.
• Nearly done - ZNC Behaviour section - probably want to set a Timezone there so replayed messages carry your localised time rather than UTC. You can also have some fun with CTCP replies. e.g.

CLIENTINFO No
FINGER Kinky
PING No
TIME No
USERINFO No
VERSION No

• Finally... hit Save :)

THIS ARTICLE NEEDS A LOT OF WORK STILL! :D