Here is my walk through for setting up irssi these are my preferences such as scripts, themes etc. You will want to create your own setup however the majority of steps here will work for you with just some name changes as required.
I will also assume you have registered your ‘nick’ although this is not required unless you wish to use private messages, OP (Operator commands) and that you have installed irssi. All of the instructions below should be done as a ‘normal user’ not root.
The easiest way to use these instructions is either open two terminals or use a terminal that allows tabbed view better still use Terminator. we will use one terminal [Terminal] for system configuration and the other terminal [irssi] for configuring and using irssi. Are we ready? here we go then.
[Terminal] $ irssi
[irssi] /set nick your_nick
[irssi] /set real_name Your Name
[irssi] /network add -nick your_nick Freenode
[irssi] /server add -auto -network Freenode irc.freenode.net
[irssi] /channel add -auto #gllug Freenode
[irssi] /network add -autosendcmd "/msg nickserv identify yourpassword;wait 2000" Freenode
You might like to change the theme of irssi I like the evolution theme but if you prefer the default then skip to “Now make a couple of folders”
[Terminal] $ cd ~/.irssi
[Terminal] $ wget http://www.irssi.org/themefiles/evolution.theme
[irssi] /set theme evolution.theme
Now make a couple of folders in /home/yourfoldername/.irssi/ (Substitute yourfoldername for the name of your folder under /home/)
[Terminal] $ mkdir ~/.irssi/scripts
[Terminal] $ mkdir ~/.irssi/scripts/autorun
You might like to download some scripts, these are the ones I use.
[Terminal] $ cd ~/.irssi/scripts/autorun
[Terminal] $ wget http://anti.teamidiot.de/static/nei/*/Code/Irssi/adv_windowlist.pl
[Terminal] $ wget http://scripts.irssi.org/scripts/autorealname.pl
[Terminal] $ wget http://scripts.irssi.org/scripts/scriptassist.pl
[Terminal] $ wget -qO - http://www.nathancoad.com/aspeller.tar.gz | tar zxvf -
OK now we’re cooking on gas, lets load our scripts
[irssi] /script load autorun/adv_windowlist.pl
[irssi] /script load autorun/autorealname.pl
[irssi] /script load autorun/scriptsassist.pl
[irssi] /script load autorun/aspeller.pl
That’s it really you are now ready to connect.
[irssi] /connect Freenode
Next time you start irssi it will automatically connect to Freenode and the #gllug channel (Or the channel of your choice)
