SpeedRunsLive is a community based around speedrunning after the popularity of livestreaming took off.
IRC
You'll need to get familiar with a fairly old internet chat protocol called IRC to use SpeedRunsLive. IRC requires using an IRC client on your computer to connect to an IRC server. IRC does not have accounts. You connect using a username, called a nick or nickname. Only one client can be using this nick at a time. You can reserve a nick for yourself by associating a password with it through the IRC service called NickServ, however this does not remove the "one client at a time" rule. You will have to do this on SRL in order to race, but it is important that you remember this information on how IRC works.
We will use the SRL webchat as the IRC client in this guide. Head to the Channel section of SpeedRunsLive.
Register with NickServ
On the webchat client, for nickname type the name you want to use for racing. Leave password alone for the moment since you don't have a password yet. Make sure that the nickname you selected is the one you really want to have as your SRL nickname, to use for all future races. If the following message appears in the Server or the SpeedRunsLive tab of your client it means you will need to choose a different one as someone else already uses this one.
<NickServ>: This nickname is registered and protected. If it is your <NickServ>: nick, type /msg NickServ IDENTIFY password. Otherwise, <NickServ>: please choose a different nick. <NickServ>: If you do not change within 20 seconds, I will change your nick.
You will also know if this is a problem if you are renamed to the name TrueSkill with numbers afterward.
In the text bar, type /msg NickServ REGISTER password email. Where password is the password you want to use to identify as this the owner of this nick, and email is your actual email address. It is important that this is your real email address if you ever forget your password. This will register the nickname you are currently using to NickServ with the corresponding email and password.
Example:
If your email address was GodGamer123@gmail.com and your password was coolestDud3, then you would type this into the text bar at the bottom of the window: