Starting out on the Internet can be a little overwhelming at first. The object of this guide is to allow the user to be more familiar with the general use of the Internet. This tutorial is in it's early stages and will be regularly updated, please check back regularly for new information.

• The World Wide Web
  There's a lot of information out there on the web. Finding the information you're looking for can be the hard part. You can use many different techniques of gathering information but the one we're going to look at is web pages. Even finding the right web pages can be a difficult task. Good resources for locating useful information are search engines. Some good examples of which would be:
  • Google
  • Altavista
  • Northern Light
  • Yahoo
  • Lycos
  Each search engine is different than the others and there are far more than can be listed in this tutorial, but they all generally work the same. When you first arrive at the page, normally towards the top of the page there's a white bar that allows you to type in what you want to look for and click "search" or "find" or whatever terminology the site decides to use to list sites that cover the topics you're searching for. The search engine will then return a list of sites (don't be surprised if it is a BIG list) that match your query. From this listing you can choose to follow the links to the sites that are listed, most search engines will provide you with 1 or 2 lines of descriptive information for the sites it lists that should make it easier to find a site with the information you are looking for. There are several tricks you can use to obtain a list that is closer to what you are looking for, but this alone would take a few pages just to cover each search engine's tips and tricks, however most search engines do provide a link to help on using that particular search engine.
• Email
  Sending Email can be done in many different ways as well but it uses the same basic concept. Most people on the Internet have Email addresses. When you sign up for our service we give you an email address that consists of your username@wrkcs.net. Most email programs are laid out in similar ways. There are 3 primary fields you should be worried about: The To field, The Subject field, and The Body. In the To field you should type the email address of the person you want to send email to. The subject field also needs to be filled in. It doesn't matter what you put there, but it should not be left blank. Finally, in the body you would put your message. When you've completed your email you can then click the "send" button which should be located somewhere towards the top of your screen.
• Newsgroups
  Newsgroups are like giant public email boxes that anyone can have access to. They are used to discuss certain topics and their "addresses" reflect the hobby or interest that is discussed in the newsgroup. There are literally tens of thousands of newsgroups (we offer access to over 40,000) to choose from ranging from computer interests to mountain biking to fishing. Some are moderated (which means there's one or more people controlling the content of the group) and some are unmoderated. An example of a newsgroup address would be: alt.computers or comp.sys.atari. To get started with newsgroups first you need a news reader. Outlook express, which is primarily used for email, also doubles as a news reader. Free Agent is another news reader program that can be obtained from Tucows.

If you have any questions or comments please email support@wrkcs.net or give us a call at 888-975-2727 or in the Du Bois Area at 375-9130.