Web site: cgiirc.org
Category: Network
Subcategory: IRC clients
Platform: Unix-like
License: GNU GPL
Interface: Web-interface
Wikipedia: CGI:IRC
First release: September 9, 2000
CGI:IRC – a program that lets you access IRC from a web browser, it is designed to be flexible and has many uses such as an IRC gateway for an IRC network, a chat-room for a website or to access IRC when stuck behind a restrictive firewall.
CGI:IRC has an interface similar to many GUI IRC clients, with a tab for each channel, userlist and options tab (when used in modern, version 5+ browsers). Older browsers degrade to a single windowed interface with a slower updating userlist.
Generally if you pay your host enough they will let you run CGI:IRC, but beware it does use a lot of memory because each user uses a web server process and a perl process. This is due to the stream based nature and the fact most webservers are designed to serve static content.