Connecting your web browser & news reader
Most World Wide Web browsers have the ability to read Usenet news directly. Your browser may already be set up to read news. Try it! Select this link to read rec.humor.funny and then use the "Back" function of your browser or just return to this window to come back here.If that failed, but you think you are set up correctly, your site may simply not have rec.humor.funny. Try this link to read the news.announce.newusers newsgroup, which almost all sites have.
This should have started your news reader and pulled some articles. If it did, everything's working!
If your news reader didn't start and pull some articles, either your network doesn't have an NNTP server, your browser doesn't know where your NNTP server is.
An NNTP server is a computer on your network that holds the news articles and lets users read them via the Network News Transfer Protocol. Not all networks have an NNTP server...if yours doesn't, you can't read newsgroups with your browser. Almost all dial-up ISPs have one, however.
If you don't know whether you have an NNTP server, you should ask your system administrator. At most sites, they give the server a name like "news.domain.com" or "nntp.domain.net," where domain is the local domain name. Most web browsers default to the name "news" so in this case it works without you having to do anything.
Once you know the name of your NNTP server, you have to tell your browser its name. For Macintosh and Windows browsers, this is specific to each program. Most browsers now have an entry on the "Options" or "Preferences" menu that lets you set up the news server information. Follow that and you should be able to find a box to enter a news server or NNTP server name. For assistance, use that program's help file, contact your sysadmin, or contact the software manufacturer.
Most UNIX browsers use the NNTPSERVER environment variable to specify where to look for news. To set this, you need to know what kind of shell you have -- a Bourne-type shell (sh, bash) or C shell (csh, tcsh).
Bourne-type shell C-type shell set NNTPSERVER server.site.com setenv NNTPSERVER server.site.com export NNTPSERVER
If you're not clear on any of this, please contact your system administrator for assistance.
