The chat has been shut down for the off-season. It will be coming back in preparation for NaNoWriMo 2010.

VancoWrimo has an IRC channel on the Vault of Ages network that we will be using for hosting virtual write-ins, word wars, meetups, and whatever else have you. The information is as follows:

Host: irc.vaultofages.net
Channel: #vancowrimo

If the above means nothing to you, don’t panic. We’ve got the newbies in mind too and have made a browser-based VancoWrimo chat available. Clicking that link will open a new browser window for you. Just type in your NaNoWriMo name (or another if you really want), click the big, friendly green button labled “Connect” and wait for the page to say something along the lines of:

*** <nickname> joined #vancowrimo

and chat  away! You might also notice someone by the name of Timmy hanging around in the chat – he is our very own Word War Bot, and he’s here to help! As soon as MysteriousAges gets un-lazy, he’ll be posting a page here with instructions on how to use him. Until then, you’ll have to ask Myst or someone else who has seen how to do it.

Warning: Technical content follows!

If the Mibbit client (web) doesn’t cut the mustard for you, you can try out a “real” IRC client, XChat, that’s free and cross-platform. You can also check out this page for a quick guide on how to set it up. The server has been configured to accept up to 60 simultaneous connections from the Mibbit clients, so we should be okay. If you can’t connect because of a “connection limit reached” or somesuch error, shoot Myst a Nanomail citing the error.