I'm not sure what the problem is with the password issue -- none of the software has changed, so there's no reason for you to be having password problems. You may find you have to clear your cookies (there's an option in "My Profile" section to do that) and try again. Alternatively, you can email me your desired passwords and I'll update accordingly.

There's nothing unique about chat that's changed either. We moved the port it uses back to its default (8080) rather than from what it was using on the old server (6667) for security reasons.

A lot of these problems can be traced to Microsoft Internet Explorer, whose default behavior is to cache Web pages for improved Internet performance. That's a great idea, but MSIE's caching engine has been flawed for years (it has numerous bugs in it) and they've done nothing to fix it. That's why people were going to the "old" page with the old port, and not being able to get in.

There's no single solution that's going to work for everyone. Some people can upgrade or change browsers, others cannot.

If you need to stick with MSIE, you can help the caching issue by choosing:

Tools > Internet Options > Temporary Internet Files > Settings (button)

Change it from the default of "automatically" to the second option (every time you start IE). That may help.