 Newsgroups
First Published: Month Year
Last Update: April 2002
Author: Computer Partners
If you've never connected to newsgroups you don't know what
you're missing. They're a lot more sophisticated than chat rooms and can
actually be intellectually stimulating.
The best part is newsgroups give you the chance to discuss
topics with people you might not otherwise have the opportunity of meeting. For
instance if you like politics and would like to discuss world issues you can go
to a politics group and get opinions from all over the world.
The difference between newsgroups and chat rooms is that
newsgroups don't take place in real time. One person will post an opinion about
something and then later that day someone else will read it and respond to it.
Because it doesn't take place in real time, people tend to put more thought into
their posts and the topics become more of a discussion.
There are newsgroups on just about any subject that interests
you. Don't worry if you don't think you could come up with an opinion to post.
There are only a small percentage of people frequenting newsgroups who actually
post. Most people are just there because they enjoy reading other people's
comments.
The purpose of this article is tell you how to set up your
browser so you can receive newsgroups. There are a lot of people who are missing
out on newsgroups because they've never taken the time to figure out how to
connect to them.
There is no additional cost involved in being connected to
newsgroups. It is included in your ISP connection cost.
Which newsgroups you have access to depends on your Internet
Service Provider(ISP). There are approximately 50,000 newsgroups and no ISP will
provide access to them all. You may come across a group on a website somewhere
that you would like to access but if it isn't hosted by your ISP you're out of
luck.
If you get an error message when you search for a particular
group, it means it probably isn't carried by your ISP. It will probably say
something like, "no such group exists". If you want the group
included, you should write to your ISP and ask them if they could start carrying
it.
I've provided the steps for connecting to newsgroups with
Netscape Navigator and Outlook Express for those people who use Explorer. Those
are the two main programs used on the market and if statistics are any
indication 90 per cent of surfers are using either one or the other.
I'm assuming that you are already using email so these steps
only involve setting up the news server connection.
Steps for Getting Connected
1. If you're using Netscape click on COMMUNICATOR from
the top menu and then click on MESSENGER. This will open your mail
program.
2. Go to the menu at the top of the browser and click on EDIT
to open the EDIT menu.
3. At the bottom of the menu is the word PREFERENCES.
Click on PREFERENCES and another menu will open with the heading Category.
4. Somewhere near the top you will see the heading Mail
& Newsgroups. Click on the + left of Mail & Newsgroups.
This opens another menu that has Newsgroup Servers listed. Click on it.
5. To the right of the opened menu you will see a tab that
says, Add. Click on it. When the window opens you will see a place to
enter the name of your ISP's news server. If your ISP is golden.net, you enter news.golden.net.
If your server is bellglobal.com, you enter news.bellglobal.com. Call
your ISP just to verify that you have the correct name for the news server.
6. The port number should already be entered. Once you enter
the server name, click OK. Near the bottom you will see the question, Ask
me before downloading more than ? messages. I usually put in a 100
that way if it's a big group, I'm not bombarded with hundreds of messages all at
once.
7. Next you will see the heading Create a newsgroup
directory. You can enter this by clicking on the Choose tab and
browsing for the directory. For instance you could put c:\Program
Files\Netscape\your name\news. Once you are done click OK.
8. Now that you're ready to receive newsgroups go to the top
menu and click on FILE. Once the menu opens scroll down until you see SUBSCRIBE.
9. Click on it and it will open the Newsgroup menu under the ALL
tab. It will take a while for the complete list of newsgroups to download from
the server.
10. Once the newsgroups have been loaded click on the SEARCHtab.
In the place where it says Search for: type in the name of the subject
you're interested in.
11. For example if you want to see what's available in
science, type in science. If you're into bird watching type in birds or
watching.
12. Once you've entered the name of the subject, click on the
tab SEARCH NOW to the right. Do a search and it will bring up the names
of the groups available on your ISP.
13. Subscribe to the group by highlighting it and clicking on
the right tab Subscribe. You will see a check mark appear. Then click OK
and the server will download that newsgroup. You unsubscribe by highlighting the
newsgroup and clicking on the right tab Unsubscribe.
14. You should now see the newsgroup listed at the bottom of
your mail menu. Double click on the name of the newsgroup and the server will
begin downloading the message headers for that particular newsgroup.
15. If you see a spool icon beside a message it means that
there are other messages beneath it. Click on the spool and it opens the rest of
the thread.
16. You post to a newsgroup by clicking on New Msg.
The name of the newsgroup will automatically appear in the To: line.
Write your message and then click Send and it will post the message to
the group.
17. You can respond to a message by opening the message and
clicking on Reply or Reply All. Reply responds to the
group. Reply All means your message will be sent to both the author and
the newsgroup.
If you're using Explorer instead of Netscape, open Outlook
Express.
1. Click on Tools and then Accounts.
2. A small window will pop up. Once this window is open,
click on the Mail tab.
3. On the right you will see an Add button, click it.
Once you have clicked on Add, click on News.
5. You will be prompted to enter your Display name:.
Enter your name the way you want it to appear on all outgoing newsgroup
messages. Click Next to continue.
6. This window asks for you to enter your e-mail address.
This way people can reply to the message you post directly rather than posting
to the whole newsgroup. Click Next to continue.
7. You are now prompted to enter the address of the news
server. For instance enter news.golden.net if you're using golden.net or news.bellglobal.com
if you're using bellglobal.com and so on. Click Next to continue.
8. Now you are asked to enter the Internet news account
name: for the account you are creating. If it isn't already entered by
default, just give it the same name as the news server i.e. news.golden.net
and click Next to continue.
9. It will now say, Choose Connection Type. If you
connect through a network click on Connect using my local area network.
If you are connecting through a phone line, click Connect using my phone line
and so on. Click Next to continue.
10. Click Finish and Close in the lower right
corner of the small window that previously popped up. You may have to click on
the CONNECT tab on the top menu before the newsgroups will be downloaded.
You can now subscribe, search or post to groups in the same
way that was described for Netscape users.
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