I am big fan of IRC but I have not been using it for a while basically because I cannot use “screen” on any of my servers. Some time ago I saw IRCCloud.com and I subscribed to beta testing but I never got any invite but it opened my intrest for browser based IRC. That would be exactly what I need especially when I am jumping from PC to PC and often I am on Windows where terminal is a hassle. Finally I found something that covers my needs. It’s called Subway and you can find it from Github

Subway is built with node.js, node-irc and MongoDB on the backend, and Backbone.js and jQuery on the frontend.

Installing on Amazon EC2 Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal)

Once you have Ubuntu running open terminal on your server ssh -i YourCertificate.pem ubuntu@YourPublicIP

Upgrade the ubuntu image and install all dependecies for running Node, notice that Ubuntu default repos includes old useless version of Node and therefore you need extra repo. More info here. You will also need Git to clone Subway from Github .

sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install python-software-properties python g++ make
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs npm
sudo apt-get install mongodb
sudo apt-get install git

 

Now you should have all you need. Next step is to clone and install Subway. For that just follow standard installation guide https://github.com/thedjpetersen/subway#installation

Once installed run “node subway” and head your browser to your http://PublicIP:3000. Remember to open port 3000 in AWS.