Nickname Registration

Your nickname is how people on freenode know you. If you register it, you'll be able to use the same nickname over and over. If you don't register, someone else may end up registering the nickname you want. If you register and use the same nickname, people will begin to know you by reputation.

Some channels may require you to register before you may speak in them. The Unable to Speak section below explains this further.

Some terms you should know:

an "account" is your persistent identity which is the first nickname that you register
a "nickname" is your current display name and can be owned (grouped) by an account
to "identify" means to log into your account
"NickServ" is a freenode service that behaves like a user (which you can send private messages to)

Registering

The following steps are the recommended method to register and set up a new freenode account. If you have questions or doubts about the process, a member of staff will be happy to discuss it and answer any questions you may have.

Select a master, "primary," nickname. If the nickname you want is registered but has expired, ask a staffer, and in most cases, we will be happy to drop it for you. Please avoid using the name of a community project or trademarked entity to prevent conflicts.
Switch to your desired nickname. This first nickname will also be your account name.
```
/nick YourNick
```
Register your IRC nick:
```
/msg NickServ REGISTER YourPassword youremail@example.com
```
Replace "YourPassword" with a secure, unguessable, and unique password that you keep secret. Reusing passwords between services can result in account compromises.

The email address that you select will not be given out by staff and is mainly used to help you recover the account if you forget your password. For this reason, you are required to use an actual, non-disposable email address.

Upon registering, you will receive an email with a verification command that you will need to run to complete the registration process. Failure to verify the account will cause it to be automatically dropped after about 24 hours.

We do not recommend sharing your NickServ password with anyone else, as this could compromise account security and make it harder for you to recover your account in the future.
It's helpful, but not required, to have an alternate nick grouped to your account. For example, if your primary nick is "YourNick":
```
/nick YourNick2
```
then identify to your primary account:
```
/msg NickServ IDENTIFY YourNick YourPassword
```
and finally, group the new nick to your account
```
/msg NickServ GROUP
```
We prefer you to use just one account and group nicks as described above rather than registering for multiple accounts. Grouping nicks in this way gives you the benefit of having all your nicks covered by the same cloak, should you choose to wear a cloak. The exception to this is where you might want to run a bot. You should register a separate account for your bot.

Logging In

You'll need to log in to your account each time you connect to freenode.

The simplest and most robust way to do this is to configure SASL if your client supports it. If not, you can supply your login details, in the form <account>:<password>, as a server password, and they will be forwarded to NickServ when you finish connecting. For example:

/connect chat.freenode.net 6667 YourNick:YourPassword

Unable to Speak

If a channel is set to mode +R, you won't be able to join it unless you are registered and identified to NickServ. If you try to join, you might be forwarded to a different channel. If a channel is set to quiet unregistered users (mode +M), you won't be able to speak while on that channel unless you are registered and identified.

Both of these modes are used by some channels to reduce channel harassment and abuse.

Once you have registered and are logged in, this issue should disappear.

Nickname Expiry

Registered nicknames and accounts will expire if they're not used for a long time, after which they'll be available for another user to take over. See our policies for details of when this occurs.

While nicknames and accounts do not automatically get deleted when they expire—only when another user requests to take over the registration—we occasionally perform clean-up runs on the services database. We will automatically drop all registrations that have been idle for a long time. When we do this, we set the threshold for deletion considerably higher than the documented expiry time to ensure that users close to the limit do not lose out.