Does anyone know how to get an IRC channel? I am really sort of clueless, so links to good one would be very wonderful.

Well, there's ParaChat, and it's free, located here: http://www.parachat.com/basic/get-yours.html
The down side it that common names normally can't be used, but numbers will be added after it (i.e. instead of Melissa, it would change to Melissa8907, etc.) However, it's free, with no download required, and works just like AIM, except in your browser.

The more common IRC chat to use is mIRC, found here: http://www.mirc.com/
However, you have to download a program, and it only provides a 30 day trial before you have to pay $20 or so. I've found this is more used on sites that have been around at least a year - it would certainly not be good to pay all that money and then have your site go dead!

These are the only two that I know of, but you can go here for other free IRCs.

Hope this helps!

((Just a side note, you have to have java for these to work - you can get it here.

If you're talking about an IRC channel in which you use a client to connect to, I'd suggest checking out http://www.dal.net/ or http://www.efnet.org/

Personally I use Mozilla Firefox's IRC client plugin. It works great. It's called 'Chatzilla' just google it and it should come up with something.

However, I'd suggest doing a lot of research before you decide to get an IRC channel. It can be completely free, but there can be a few issues with it as well. The wikipedia page that Miranda posted has a lot of information worth reading through rather than just the links.

As far as I know, mIRC has never forced anyone to pay for it. I had it a few years ago, exceeded the 30 days, and kept using it. Then I got it on my laptop again last year, exceeded those 30 days as well, and am still using it. After the first 30 days, you get a message saying, "Your evaluation time of 30 days has expired, please register online now!" But if you wait maybe about 10 seconds, there is a "Continue" option so I just use that. I don't know about channels and opping people, though.

Otherwise, I have friends who use Chatzilla and they say that it's great.