Idiots guide to newsgroups.

[Polarbert]

How do I get this to work in outlook express? I've had a go but can't figure it out, keeps telling me I don't have a host.


Many thanks.

[plasticpig]

First of all you need to know the address of your ISP NNTP server. Usually its something like news.isp.net. If you ISP dosent have a news server then you will have to use a commercial one like easynews or giganews. The host not found message sounds like it cant find the news server so check the news sever address.

[iaint]

Most ISPs have a guide for configuring your newsreader software to use their unsenet server. This is also the case for 3rd party servers like those mentioned above.

If you're going to use OE you'll also need a plugin to view yEnc encoded pictures (i.e. porn) as OE doesn't support the compression format as standard.

Seriously though - use something other than outlook express, it sucks.

[zumbruk]

And if you *must* use OE to post to Usenet, *please* install OE-quotefix first;

http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/

I've used Gravity and Agent, which are both quite good.

[onomatopoeia]

If you are going to post anything to a newsgroup, in addition to the good advice above, really really really do not post in HTML. Newsgroups are not websites, very many newsreaders will not render HTML. Actually emails are not websites either, but I seem to have lost the fight on that one .

Get (Free) Agent or similar if you intend to become anything more than an occasional newsgroup user.