Forum look

P

Paul M

Hi
Has the look of the forums changed. this morning I loged on and found that I
had to first pick a language, then a country before entering the forums. I
usually use (fronpage client) but it has been replaced with (general
questions). This is realy anoying because I have to navigate to the forum
through language and country everytime . Could there be a problem my end
somewhere?
Best wishes
Paul M
 
J

Jack Brewster

Crais is referring to the news server. This is the server that powers the
back end of the forums. If you have Outlook Express handy (and who
doesn't), you can connect directly to the news (or "nntp") server and bypass
the web-based stuff.

Regulars tend to prefer connecting directly to the news server because they
can use their program of choice, store old messages, keep track of
responses, etc. It's kind of like reading emails.

Since I can't find a user friendly page that tells you how to connect
directly to the news server (thanks Microsoft...), here's the detail, in
general.

Open up Outlook Express and create a new account. One of the account types
is "news," select that. When prompted for your email address, either put in
something fake, or "mess up" your real one (see mine for an example). One
of the problems with newsgroups is that spammers "harvest" email addresses
from this. Messing up your address is a standard defense technique. When
asked for the server, enter:
msnews.microsoft.com

Once you've connect, OE will want to download a list of available groups.
Go ahead and let it do so (it won't take too long). Once it's done, just
subscribe to the groups that you're interested in. You can use the
subscribe tool to search. So, say you want to see all the FrontPage groups,
type in "frontpage" and the list will reduce to show only those that match
your search term.

If you need any more assistance, you should probably check out the Outlook
Express newsgroups. ;)
 
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