Newbie's Guide to the Web!
"Bear with me, I'm new at this."
This is, not surprisingly, one of
the more common phrases heard on the FullNet
Customer Service line. Fortunately, our department
knows just how to guide even the newest customer in
getting their Internet connection established. We
work with the customer to get them connected, make
sure that their email is working, and remind them
that we're available 24/7 to assist with any trouble
in getting and staying online. We thought it might
be a good idea to give our customers a web page that
answers the most common "after-support" question:
"I'm online... what now?"
The first thing that FullNet
provides its customers is the Internet connection.
We do not require that our customers install a
specific client application in order to connect to
us; rather, we prefer that our customers use the
built-in dial up networking components available
through their particular operating system, whether
it be Windows, Macintosh, WebTV, or even Linux.
Once you are connected to FullNet
you can use any of a number of free programs to use
that Internet connection and do any number of things
online.
If you are using a Windows-based
computer, you already have a web browser: Internet
Explorer. While this browser will fill the needs of
most customers, there are those who prefer a faster
or smaller program. Fortunately, there are several
free alternatives
available for download.
Web browsing is straightforward.
Every website has a URL, or "uniform resource
locator." The URL is composed of two parts: the
content type and the website address. A website
address is something like "FullNet.net" and the
content type is something like "http://".
Fortunately, your browser understands that when you
type www.fullnet.net in the address bar, it should
add on the http:// for you!
If you have Internet Explorer, you
also already have a free email client: Outlook
Express. This email client is capable of filling
most customers' needs, but there are
free alternatives
to this program as well!
The way an email client works is
simple: the "client" program moves your email from
the FullNet "servers" (where new mail is held until
you check for it) across your Internet connection,
back to your home computer. Once your email has been
moved, it is no longer on our servers and
resides only on your own computer.
For those customers who would
prefer to leave their email on our servers so that
they can check it from any location, there is
another available method called "WebMail". You can
direct a browser window to
http://webmail.fullnet.net
and provide your login information (username and
password) in order to authenticate to our server.
Once this is done, you are able to read the email
that is waiting on our server instead of moving it
to your home computer.
There is also a third option.
Customers can read their email through WebMail,
delete what they do not want to keep, and then open
their email client (like Outlook Express) to
download the email that they wish to keep from our
servers to their home computers. This has a few
benefits: you still keep the copy of your email on
your home machine, so you don't have to be online to
re-read it, and you only spend time downloading the
email that you really wanted in the first place.
This means you won't end up stuck waiting half an
hour downloading email messages that you didn't
want!
More to come...
