Starting IRC service

Hi AO, I'm planning to start IRC service, first privately in my circle of friends,
later for public, with DICE on WinXP.
The problem is, I had no such administration experience before.
IRC particularly is associated "hacker attacks", and all, so I'm a bit
intimidated ;) Any useful advice for administrator noob?

the perfect OP (admin ) manual for IRC ....

http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/opguide.html

more good links how to secure your channel and your OP status :

http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Sysadmin/IrcOper
http://alamak.com.sg/info/?page=ircintro
http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/security/
http://www.newircusers.com/security.html
http://livinginternet.com/r/rs.htm
http://www.astalavista.com/library/irc/security/
http://lists.insecure.org/lists/fire.../Jun/0046.html
http://www.ircbeginner.com/ircinfo/irc-safety.html

you also might want to PM er0k and MicroBurn think they knows a little bit more about this subject

also come to the irc.unerror.com or irc.bytekill.com or shrekkie.serveirc.com server and join channel #lobby for unerror and shrekkie and channel #bytekill for irc.bytekill.com .... and ask one of the admins how they secure their IRC servers .....