GeekShed IRC Network
IdleRPG Contest!
Mar 31st
Calling all chatters!
Are you pondering how you could possibly earn a gift card for doing nothing more than just chatting like you already do?
If so, #IdleRPG is for you.
Corey from CoreyRants.com is sponsoring a contest involving our #IdleRPG game and room.
The basis of IdleRPG is to see who can idle the longest in #IdleRPG without parting the channel, quitting the network, changing your nick, or chatting in #IdleRPG.
For your chance to win a gift card, check out CoreyRants.com for the complete details, registration information and rules of the game.
Please Note: The Contest starts April 1st, 2010, and goes until June 1st, 2010
Flash Client Upgrade
Jan 7th
We have, for quite a while now, offered TFlash as our web based IRC client. This was originally written as a quick replacement for the Java client we used previously. TFlash has, however, stood up to the test of time and has proved to be a very popular client amongst users.
We have now decided that it is time to upgrade TFlash to make it bigger and better. To this end, we contracted Mike Parks (BigRedPimp) of thinkrightgames.com to carry out the work. He is an incredibly experienced Flash developer and has made an exceptional job of the new Flash Client.
Today we have launched this new client and it should now be embedded on all of the sites that had the old Flash client embedded.
Development of the client started in early December and, since then, a team of testers have tirelessly tested it and removed bugs. We thank them for their help. If you do however find a bug, please report it using the address at the top of the new flash client.
BigRedPimp has put in a huge amount of effort with this project and we thank him unreservedly for his time and for doing this project for such a low cost. We are glad to call him a friend of GeekShed.
If you have any questions about the new Flash client, please come and see us in #help on irc.geekshed.net.
You can see the new TFlash at http://www.geekshed.net/chat/
We have now decided that it is time to upgrade TFlash to make it bigger and better. To this end, we contracted Mike Parks (BigRedPimp) of thinkrightgames.com to carry out the work. He is an incredibly experienced Flash developer and has made an exceptional job of the new Flash Client.
Today we have launched this new client and it should now be embedded on all of the sites that had the old Flash client embedded.
Development of the client started in early December and, since then, a team of testers have tirelessly tested it and removed bugs. We thank them for their help. If you do however find a bug, please report it using the address at the top of the new flash client.
BigRedPimp has put in a huge amount of effort with this project and we thank him unreservedly for his time and for doing this project for such a low cost. We are glad to call him a friend of GeekShed.
If you have any questions about the new Flash client, please come and see us in #help on irc.geekshed.net.
You can see the new TFlash at http://www.geekshed.net/chat/
GeekShed Management Script
Jan 5th
GeekShed has an officially supported management script written by the GeekShed staff along with users Zetacon and GrimReaper. It offers a range of features including canned messages to help people with common questions as well as some decent channel and nickname management features.
We have checked out the tags directory at http://www.geekshed.net/gs-script/ so you can find each version of the script. We recommend using the latest version (i.e. the one with the highest version number). The script is the one ending in .mrc. The .sig file is the GPG signature of the script and has been included from versions 1.8 for posterity. Public key Phil Lavin (Freelance Programmer) can be found on major key synchronizing servers.
Load it into the remotes section of your script editor just like any other script or place it in your mIRC install dir and type:
We have checked out the tags directory at http://www.geekshed.net/gs-script/ so you can find each version of the script. We recommend using the latest version (i.e. the one with the highest version number). The script is the one ending in .mrc. The .sig file is the GPG signature of the script and has been included from versions 1.8 for posterity. Public key Phil Lavin (Freelance Programmer) can be found on major key synchronizing servers.
Load it into the remotes section of your script editor just like any other script or place it in your mIRC install dir and type:
/load -rs gs-chanscript.mrcAny problems, come see us in #help on irc.geekshed.net
GeekShed Certificate Authority
Oct 24th
GeekShed has established a certificate authority to allow it to issue signed SSL certificates. All you must do, to prevent your IRC client notifying you of a bad certificate (unless of course your connection is being tampered with) is install our root certificate.
To do this on Windows, follow the following simple steps:
1) Download this file and save it somewhere (MD5 = 73c63926c41a312a031c56457b638423)
2) Double click it. You should see the following:
3) Click “install certificate”. You should see the following:
4) Click “Next” and change the check box so that it is marking “Place all cetificates in the following store”. It should look like this:
5) Click the browse button and you should see a screen like this:
6) Click “Trusted root certification authorities” so that it is highlighted.
7) Click OK to the close the “Select Certificate Store” window and click “Next” followed by “Finish” to close the “Certificate Import Wizard” window.
8) Click OK to finally close the “Certificate” window.
9) You should now be able to use our SSL services without being prompted about a bad certificate. To do this, connect to ssl.geekshed.net on port 6697, ensuring SSL is enabled for the connection. On mIRC, you simply need to type: /server ssl.geekshed.net:+6697
Topic RSS
Oct 24th
EDIT: You can also do this with Javascript now! See http://www.geekshed.net/2011/03/channel-topic-on-your-site-using-javascript/ for info.
We have setup the following RSS feeds that track topic changes.
For the current topic of every channel on the network use: feed://rss.geekshed.net/
For a feed that returns the current topic of any channel you specify replace, “help” with the channel name you want: feed://rss.geekshed.net/?type=single&channel=help
For a feed that returns the last 10 topics of any single channel you specify replace, “chris” with the channel name you want: feed://rss.geekshed.net/?type=singlehistory&channel=chris
For example, you could use this free script to display your chat’s current topic or history of topics on your web site.
Note: Do not include the pound sign in your channel name.
The GeekShed topic RSS service also supports switching of topic and main body. This may help with ease of use in some RSS readers.
To use the new switch feature, simply tag &switch onto the end of your RSS feed URL. For example: http://rss.geekshed.net?type=singlehistory&channel=help&switch
To use the data from this RSS feed to put the current topic on your website, use the following code:
<?php
// Edit This
$chan = 'phil';
// Don't edit this
$xml = simplexml_load_file('http://rss.geekshed.net/?type=single&channel='.$chan);
?>
<!-- Edit this HTML to suit your layout -->
#<?php echo $chan; ?> Topic: <?php echo htmlentities($xml->channel->item->description); ?>
User Count Badges
Oct 24th
GeekShed offers free badges for your website to display how many users your channel has. To get one for your site, use the following easy generator:
Samples:
Big: Small:
Long:
NOTE: For a text-only count of the users in a channel, use:
http://usercount.geekshed.net/?chan=help&noimage
In the example, the channel is #help. Simply replace the channel with the name of your channel to get the text-only user count.