NEWSGROUP HELP

The News reader provided by Primary Network is either Microsoft Internet Explorer News or Netsacpe News. Another news reader, WinVn is a freeware tool which some Primary customers have also used. These products will work with the Usenet News system. Usenet is sort of like a bulletin board that users can read from and post messages to, and these messages are propagated all over the world. Each of these bulletin boards is called a newsgroup. Primary Network provides newsgroups from 4 sources, Sprint, Savvis, Starnet, and Rdrnet. There are currently about 25000 newsgroups from these 4 services and the subjects vary as widely as the people who read and post to them. Usenet is a great source of information and entertainment to most who use it. We currently download all groups offered to us by our News feed. If you find that a particular group is missing please let us know and we will attempt to get it added to our server. Some groups are limited in their scope and are site specific so a college or business may have it on their site but not propagate it around. New groups are added almost everyday.

If you are behind a proxy server or firewall and can't access Primary's newsgroups, we suggest using Deja News as a news server. Deja-news won't handle binaries however, so some news sites won't be available.

Advertising in newsgroups is considered poor etiquette. There are varying opinions on what is considered spamming ( unsolicited advertisements, 'junk mail'). Primary Network requests that anything that might be considered spamming at least be passed by us first for discussion. Should a user spam Usenet and continue after being asked to desist, that user's access will be terminated at Primary Network's discretion. Repercussions from spamming incidences can cause you, Primary Network's other clients, and Primary Network great problems.

Primary Network is no way responsible for the content of the newsgroups. Some of the material could be deemed highly objectionable by some people and is not intended for minors. Primary Network does not monitor nor censor any of these groups or those who access them. There are usually FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) documents available about the groups on the Web and we recommend these be sought out and read prior to accessing or posting to a group.

Listed below are some screen shots and help in setting up Newsgroups on your computer. If you have any questions or problems please contact Tech Support (1-800-420-5682).

MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER NEWSGROUPS
NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR 3.0 NEWSGROUPS
NETSCAPE COMMUNICATOR 4.0 NEWGROUPS
WinVn NEWSGROUPS

MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER NEWSGROUPS top of page
In Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0, newsgroups are accessed by Clicking Go, then Clicking News from the Menu bar at the top of the screen:

Notice that news.primary.net has appeared at the bottom of the Outlook Express mailbox list. If there is a '+' sign to the left of news.primary.net, the '+' and the subscribed newsgroup list(s) will appear. The number (10) displayed to the right of the group denotes the number of unread messages. Double-clicking on the list name [ex: 5col.announce(10)] will open the messages and display them in the window to the right..

The same rules apply for reading, answering, replying, etc. to any message as in Outlook Express Mail. Click on the message you wish to read and it will appear below the summary window. The window is divided into three parts - mailbox names on the left, Summary window on the top right and the text of the selected message displayed on the bottom right. Any of these windows can be re-sized by 'dragging' the horizontal or veritcal gray bar dividing each window. Position the mouse pointer on the bar until it turns into a double line with an arrow extending from the top and bottom. When you see these arrows, click and hold the mouse button and move the mouse in the appropriate direction - up, down, left, right. The section will re-size. When you have achieved the size wished release the mouse button.

To subscribe or unsubscribe to newsgroups, Click Tools, then Click Newsgroups. This will open a window similar to the one below. Type a subject that interests you in the Display newsgroups...... line and all the groups that contain the 'keyword' (ex: sports) will appear. Select any group and click the Subscribe button to the right. This will place a marker to the left of the group. Click OK and when you go back to the news window those groups that you have subscribed to will be added to the newsgroup list. This same process is repeated when you wish to Unsubscribe to any groups. The Reset List button will pull down all newsgroups available (more than 32,000 at this date). The first time you access all newsgroups it will most likely take a long while to bring them all down for your access. Be patient...depending on your system this could take minutes or hours.

NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR 3.0 NEWSGROUPS top of page

Open Netscape Navigator. Click on Options, then click on Netscape News
The news server is news.primary.net. If the folder has a '+' sign to the left of it, this means there are newsgroups inside the folder. Click the '+' to open the folder.

When you click Options from the Menu bar you are presented with several selections, including Show all Newsgroups; Show Active Newsgroups; Show Subscribed Newsgroups...etc.
You must select Show all Newsgroups before you can subscribe to any. Review the newsgroup list and place a checkmark in the box to the right of the groups you want to subscribe to.
Then click Options, Show Subscribed Newsgroups
Your subscribed newsgroups will appear. The number to the right of the checkmark is the number of unread items in each group.
The same rules apply to read, reply, forward, etc. newsgroup messages as for Netscape mail messages.

NETSCAPE COMMUNICATOR 4.0 NEWSGROUPS top of page

Click on Communicator from the Menu Bar, then click Collabra Discussion Groups. A screen similar to the one below will be displayed. The newsgroup name is news.primary.net and will be displayed at the bottom of the list of mailboxes for your Message Center. The names of subscribed newsgroups and the quantity messages in each group is also displayed in this window.

To Subscribe to specific newsgroups, click the Subscribe Icon on the toolbar. Type a keyword in the Discussion Group: line and all groups containing that keyword will be displayed. To subscribe click the symbol to the right of the group name, a checkmark will appear. To unsubscribe, click the checkmark. Click OK when all groups have been selected.

The new groups subscribed to will appear in your Message Center. The same rules apply for reading, sending, forwarding, etc. these messages as for Netscape Communicator Mail.

WinVn NEWSGROUPS top of page
WinVN is a newsreader for Windows systems. It comes in 16-bit and 32-bit versions. It can be downloaded from www.download.com by putting in the name, winvn, in the search line and following the instructions.

WinVn will start up the very first time by telling you that it needs a newsrc file created. Unless for some reason you wish to have this file in another directory the default is recommended. At this time the file is about 650K in size and growing. Click OK to make the file. WinVn will then try to connect to the server. It has already been configured to go to news.primary.net. This system has no password or username but is limited to systems within our network The first time you should also get a message about downloading the newsgroup list. The message asks if it is ok or not because of the time involved. Believe it!!! This file is 650K or more and will take about 8 + minutes at 28.8. This file must be downloaded once to use the reader. This will only have to be done once unless the file get corrupted or is missing. You will get a message about updating the list everytime though this should be done every now and then to pick up new newsgroups.

WinVN puts the list in a window and at the top will show the total number of newsgroups listed and how many you subscribe to.

Under the Config menu are your options for setting up the window environment, mail server and other settings. Subscribing to a group is a way of telling the software that you wish to monitor that particular group and if you configure the windows settings that way they will be the only groups to show up in the list. The default is for all groups to show with the subscribed ones being bold. Be sure to look through the new.newusers groups for more information about how to use and what new Usenet is all about.

With all the groups listed in the main windows select the spyglass icon from the tool bar. This is the find button. It will pop a dialog box and ask for you to enter a string to search for that pertains to a subject of interest like school, pictures, or games. Be sure to have the full list showing for the search

. The screen should jump to the first occurrence of the word or string you entered if it is found. You can either subscribe and look of more topics, open this newsgroup, or just move on to other newsgroups. To subscribe: select a group, click Groups, then click Subscribe Selected Groups. To open the newsgroup:double click on the name of the group and it will pop another window and read in the articles. The default is to read in articles that you haven't read. You can make it read in all or just some by adjusting the settings under the Config menu. When the newsgroup is open and wish you see the headers of the articles. You can scroll down and look for something that interests you or just double click on one and read you way through. Depending on the topic there can be updates every few minutes to new articles being added fairly infrequently.

Binary Groups

Some groups have binaries in the name and others just have binary articles in them. You will know if you hit one when the message is full of strange characters that make no sense. These articles need to be unencoded before you can use them. This is standard practice for files that need to remain in a specific state such as executables for tools or games and gif or jpg files for pictures. WinVN is able to decode these articles and put them in a usable state. Articles that have binaries in them will typically say so in the header by showing a filename such as game.zip (1/15). This means that when you decode this article you will have a file named game.zip and that this article is the first of 15 parts. Most games are to large to put into one file. One problem with this is that through all the propagation of the files sometimes parts will get lost, not much we can do about this. Because of the size of all the groups on the new server articles typically do not stay around for more than a week before being purged.

To decode an article:
1) Select that article by clicking on it, multiples can also be done,
2) Under the Articles menu select Decode articles.
3) This will open a dialog box asking where to save it to
4) Then open a status bar and finally a statistics box showing the file has been moved.

To post a article:
1) Go to the Articles menu and select New Article.
2) This brings up a mail dialog box and automatically attaches your name to the post.
3) You fill in the Subject, text and any attachments if necessary.
4) Posts should be relevant to the majority of the people that access a group.
5) If your post is to a specific person go to Articles and select Compose Mail.