If you have ever thought to yourself, "sure, I like MSN/AIM/GoogleTalk/ ICQ/Yahoo! fine, but I wish we DIY'ers had our very own, private chat server, featuring multi-user chat rooms and more assured privacy," well, today is your day!

As some of you doubtless know, there are chat clients that can connect you to more than one network at a time, in case you have been unable to convince all your pals to use the one you like. I highly recommend Pidgin, which works in Windows and Linux, and I believe Adium is well thought of for the Mac. If you get one of these, I also highly recommend you grab Off-The-Record Messaging, which lets you encrypt your conversations so that no one can eavesdrop on them.

Here are links for all that:

• Pidgin - http://www.pidgin.im/
• Adium - http://www.adiumx.com/
• OTR - http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/

They have their own online docs, which I beg you to consult before asking me, or worse, the list, for help. Even if you don't care about DIY's server, you can put your MSN/AIM/etc. chat all in one place so you don't have 4 windows crowding your screen's real estate.

Now, to set them up to use DIY's own server, you set up a new account using "XMPP" (some clients, if you're using something besides Pidgin, will show "Jabber" instead; it's the same thing). Pick a username and password you like. As the domain, use "talk.diydharma.org". You can put whatever you want in Resource -- I usually use "home" or "work" or wherever I'm signing in from; it doesn't really matter. In the Advanced tab, check "Require SSL/TLS" (this makes it so your password can't be picked up when you sign in). Then check "create this new account on the server" back in the Basic tab, and click "Save".

Once you're all setup and connected to our server you're ready to join our chat room. It's named "sangha" and in Pidgin all you need to do is click on "Buddies"  and then choose "Join a chat". Then stick in "sangha" as the name of the room. You can leave all the other fields just the way they are.

See you soon!