how to connect to silcnet with pidgin?

I'm trying out silc for the first time.

When I go to create a silc account in pidgin, it requires that I enter
a password to use to connect to silcnet. However, I don't see anywhere
on the silcnet website to register a user. Why does it require a
password? If I try to connect without specifying a password, I get an
error "unable to load SILC key pair."

Is there a step by step guide somewhere to explain how to connect to
silcnet via pidgin?

Also, I've set up a private silc server using silcd. How do I register
users for that server? I would like a fixed set of people I know to be
able to connect to my silc server, but to not allow random people on
the internet to connect.

Thanks,
Brendan

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