Friendly IRC-based Web Chat

If you take a look under the hood of most modern chat platforms, you will find a massive web of corporate tracking, algorithmic feeds, and bloated data centers. They want your data, your attention, and your monthly subscription fees. Here at StormNet, we take a completely different approach. We run a lean, decentralized network powered by 9 dedicated servers (1 hub, 8 leaf nodes) running UnrealIRCd on Linux. For the average user, that might sound like technical jargon. But fo

Most chat platforms today are built around one idea: keep you inside the app. Notifications, recommendations, reactions, and a feed all sit between you and the people you came to talk to. IRC does the opposite. It is a simple text protocol from 1988 that still does one job well: put people in a room and let them talk. That sounds modest. It is also why small networks keep appearing, and why some of them last for decades. A room, not a product An IRC channel is just a named sp

Hi all. First off, a few things: Sorry I've been MIA for however long it's been since the last blog post. Real life stuff plus enjoying my summer kind of got in the way. But now that it's fall, I'm ready to roll up my sleeves and get back to work! We went to Mexico at the end of August for a week. I know, I know what you're all thinking. I'm crazy going to Mexico in August. It's so hot. You're right. It was very hot. But the beautiful thing about going in the off-season is i

The History of IRC: From a Finnish University Lab to the Internet’s First Real-Time Chat Revolution. In the late 1980s, long before Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, or even AOL Instant Messenger existed, a Finnish student created something revolutionary: Internet Relay Chat (IRC). Today, in 2026, IRC still powers thousands of communities, gaming groups, tech support channels, and nostalgia-driven hangouts. While it may look old-school compared to modern apps, its influence on real-t