Using irssi and screen
There is irssi and screen preinstalled in the server. Startup it with a command screen -S <nameItHere> irssi where <nameItHere> is the name you want your irssi screen be called, example just simple irssi like: screen -S irssi irssi
Then there is few simple settings you need to set. /set nick <nick> : To set your primary nickname in IRC servers /set alternate_nick <nick> : To set secondary nick, if primary has been used by someone else. /set user_name <ident> : To set up your identity, wich is used usually at the BNC connections. /set real_name <nimi> : To set your real name.
To connect into servers just use /connect irc.server.address. It will automatically use the default port, if you need to connect to another port write the address and after that space and the port, example /connect irc.fi.quakenet.org 6669
And the people wanting to "tune" irssi, there is plenty of scripts possible to install. Just go to [1] and select what you want to install, above the site is quide how-to install them. If your going to install multiple scripts, easiest way is to get scriptassist.pl and then install scripts using assist in the irssi, that way you dont need to download and load them.
More help for using irssi can be found by google.
