The Internet: A worldwide connection of individual computers. The Internet can never be "down". Only an individual computer or service can be "down".

ISP – Internet Service Provider: A company that has at least one computer with a registered connection to the Internet. Each ISP may provide from one to 3 services you need. Not all these services need to be provided by the same ISP:

• dial-up access to the Internet (via "modems", devices that format and unformat data for transmission over telephone lines)
• a computer (a "web server" ) where your web site files are stored
• a mailbox (or mailboxes) where your email is stored. Mail service is provided by a computer called a "mail server".

If you have a good ISP in your local area, you may choose to have all of these services provided by the same ISP. Or, you may have only a dial-up account with a local ISP so that you will not have to pay toll calls to access the Internet and have your web site and mailbox(es) hosted at an ISP better suited for web site hosting.

See "Recommendations for ISP's" at the end of this document for more information.

Virtual Domain Name: A permanent name for your site, registered with the Internic. For example: www.SeaHorseTales.com

• It is a permanent address for your site and email address. If you are forced to change ISP’s (because you move, the ISP goes out of business, or provides poor service) the name of your site and all your email addresses can remain the same. Ads, business cards, brochures and all your associates, clients and friends can keep using the same address to contact you.
• This address is registered with an organization called the "Internic". Internic maintains a database of all virtual domain names, their owner’s contact information, billing information and addresses of the ISP servers where the domain name is maintained.
• It looks professional and is easier for your clients to remember.
• You must be sure to own your domain name. The name and organization listed as "domain name registrant" when the name is registered with the Internic own the domain name. Sometimes an ISP or web designer will list themselves as the domain name registrant if they perform this work for you. This can cause future problems ranging from the loss of your virtual domain name to another company to re-registering the name (a $100 fee). Our contract specifies that you own any domain name we register on your behalf.
• There is a charge for registration. $100USD for the first 2 years and $50USD for each year thereafter.

Email Service and Software: There are various methods of using email. To send and receive email (electronic mail), you must have a dial-up connection and account at an ISP and email software on your computer.

Your mailbox can be located at your local ISP, the one you dial into. To receive mail you

1. connect to your local ISP (this establishes a connection to a POP server, a Point of Presence server.
2. start your email software which will
3. connect to a different kind of POP, "Post Office Protocol", server at the local ISP. It will ask you to provide a User ID and Password to this server.

Your PC with email software & local options Modem Your local ISP POP mail server and your mailbox The Internet Remote ISP Receiving Email on the Internet (using a mailbox at your local ISP)

You can also have a mailbox at a remote ISP, probably the one where your web site is hosted. In this case to access your email, you:

1. connect to your local ISP (this establishes a connection to a POP server, a Point of Presence server which give you access to the Internet..
2. start your email software which will
3. connect to a different kind of POP, "Post Office Protocol", server at the remote ISP. It will ask you to provide a User ID and Password to this server.

Your PC with email software & remote options Modem Your local ISP The Internet Remote ISP with your web site and your mailbox Receiving Email on the Internet (using a mailbox at your remote ISP)

Of course, you can have mailboxes at both a local and remote ISP. Then you must decide where you want to access your mail, at one of them or at both. You can check only one mailbox and have the other ISP forward all mail to your mailbox at the ISP with the mailbox you check. OR you can set up your email software to check mail at both ISP’s.

Whichever method you choose, your incoming email is stored in your mailbox on the POP (post office) server until the email software on your computer retreives it and stores it in a mailbox on your computer.

To send mail the process is similar. A different server, an SMTP "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol" server at your local or remote ISP handles outgoing mail. The mail you send using the email software on your computer is transferred to a mailbox at the SMTP server where it is stored until it is successfully sent. If there is a problem sending the mail, you will get an error email indicating the problem.

You can have several mailboxes on a mail server. You may want to do this if you have several staff or family members who need to have their own mailbox.

How the email setup is best structured for you depends on your particular circumstances.

You should use your virtual domain name for all email associated with your web site. Role accounts are preferable (for example, using info@seahorsetales.com as opposed to ddfugitt@seahorsetales.com on your web site which will insure that you get less junk emails).

We recommend the Eudora products, Eudora Proä and Eudora Lightä from Qualcomm. You can download them from http://www.eudora.com. Eudora Light is a free product, while Eudora Pro can usually be purchased for about $50USD. Eudora is a very good product with few problems. If you ask for help with email problems, we will first ask you to install Eudora.

Internet Browsers: A browser is the software on your computer that you use to view web sites or pages on the Internet.

Browsers are updated frequently, about every 6 months or so and in order to keep up with the latest developments on the Internet, you should plan on updating your browser at least once a year. The most common browsers are Netscape and MS Internet Explorer.

If you do not have sufficient resources on your computer to support the browser and the web pages you want to view, you may notice that pages only load halfway, images do not load, load partway or your computer locks up when you try to view web pages. Of course, you will think there is something wrong with the Internet, the ISP or your web page. However, if this happens often, it may be your computer or your browser.

URL, "Uniform Resource Locator": Every page (or file) on the Internet has an address called its URL. A URL specifies the protocol, server, and pathname of an item. For example, http://www.seahorsetales.com/logs/Cal/ChanIsle1.html, the http: identifies the communications type as "http" (the method for transferring data between a web server and a web browser), the server (machine) as "www.seahorsetales.com", the directory path to the page (or file) as "/logs/Cal/" and the filename as "ChanIsle1.html"

Most browsers will automatically insert the "http://" if you don’t type it in as they assume any URL you want to view with a browser is in this format, the HyperText Transfer Protocol. (Protocol is a defined method of communication).

FTP: File Transfer Protocol: A method for sending, "transferring", data from one computer to another. We use FTP software to transfer your web site's pages (or files) to the ISP's web server that hosts your web site. If you sign up for a web site host account at an ISP, be sure to obtain the FTP address, User ID and password we will use to upload and maintain your site.

DNS: Domain Name Server: A server that converts the names you see for web sites and email addresses to addresses that the computers on the Internet use to find and identify each other. These addresses, IP addresses, are strings of numbers like "207.137.28.4". When your local ISP receives a request from your browser to locate a URL at "seahorsetales.com" the DNS will search, come up with the IP address of the computer where "seahorsetales.com" is located and allow you to route your request for a URL to it.

When the DNS at your local ISP is down you will not be able to reach any URL's on the Internet unless you know their IP address (which is unlikely). That is why you sometime see a message like "Netscape is unable to locate the server: www.seahorsetails.com. The server does not have a DNS entry. " and your browser won't display the web page you wanted. You need to know the IP address of the DSN server at your local ISP so you can configure the software on your computer for Internet access. Other than that, you don't need to worry about it unless you see an error message that refers to a DNS problem. (You might check your spelling!)

Search Engines: A search engine is a computer or series of computers that search the Internet for web sites and spit out lists of URL’s when provided with search keywords. The sites are listed in an order according to words found in the site, titles, programming in the site and/or information given when a site is manually registered with the search engine. Each search engine has different criteria for prioritizing a URL in the index.

Sometimes after a search engine or directory lists a site, the web site is moved, shut down or the file names are changed. That is why some of the links provided do not work.

Knowledge of how each search engine functions is essential to the promotion of your site on the Internet. Without some planning and effort, your site will probably not show up in searches.

Alta Vista, Excite, Lycos and Infoseek are examples of search engines.

Directories: A directory is a list of web sites based on categories. Sometimes it is industry specific, sometimes it lists the best sites in various categories. Generally a web site must be registered in a directory, but some have search engines to help add listings to the directory.

Yahoo and Magellan are examples of directories. There are also small, very specialized directories for dive related sites that are important places to list your web site’s URL.

Miscellaneous Recommendations:

1. Recommendations for ISP's:

   Some small local ISPs offer excellent service and very personal support. This can be very important and we recommend you attempt to locate one in your area. The ISP's we recommend for hosting your site fall into this category. Reliability is very important. You want to get connected each time you dial and have continuous quick access to your ISP. You want visitors to always be able to reach your web site and to have it display or "be served up" quickly. The speed you experience when using the Internet depends on several factors. Your computer configuration and modem speed; the computer(s) and bandwidth to the Internet at the ISP you dial into; the web server (or email server) that you are connecting to at the other end and the traffic on the Internet at the current time. You must be sure that your dial-up ISP and the ISP where your web site is hosted are always able to handle the volume of traffic they experience.

   You will probably want a PPP "Point-to-Point Protocol" account with your ISP. This type of account will allow you to connect to the Internet over a dial-up connection to view web sites and access email. If your web site is not hosted at your local ISP, you do not need any other type of service at the local ISP.

   We recommend that you not use Compuserve or AOL as they are too restrictive for Internet access, can't forward mail should you ever decide to move, technical support is difficult to obtain and their email package and browser software is buggy and limited. The best way to find a local ISP is to ask around. You might try asking staff at a local computer store for recommendations.
   
   

2. Operating System. On a PC, run Windows 95. Older versions of the Windows software (3.1) were not designed to include the software necessary to use the Internet. Although add-on products can be installed to run the TCP protocol that is the base for accessing the Internet, it will be more involved to get connected and it will not handle errors easily. You will waste a lot of time and be continually confused! Win '95 has the software integrated into the system.
   
   
3. Contracting for a site. If you are thinking about having a web site developed for your business, read: "Legal Issues Associated with the Creation and Operation of Web Sites" by Richard D. Harroch, Esq. It will explain many of the legal issues involved in contracting for a site. These items are addressed in the City Seahorse, Inc. balanced Web Site Design and Maintenance Agreement.
   
   
4. Phone Lines. You may want to get a separate phone line for your email and Internet access. As your web site and email activity picks up, it may be difficult to share voice and fax lines.
   
   
5. Domain Name. If you ever plan to register a virtual domain name, do it now. The name you want may be registered to someone else if you wait. Also you can…

   Use an email address at your virtual domain for all business correspondence so that you never have to change your email address. For example use "ddfugitt@seahorsetales.com" instead of "ddfugitt@compuserve.com".
   
   

6. Email Software. Use a good email program such as Eudora Pro for your mail access. The program should allow you to easily send, forward, reply and store messages and addresses. It should make it easy for you to send attachments. You may find its ability to check multiple mailboxes handy sometime in the future. If you start with a limited program it will be difficult to switch later on.
   
   
7. Signature. Create a standard signature that will be appended to the bottom of every email you send. Include your company name, address, phone and fax numbers, email address and the URL of your web site in the format http://www.seahorsetales.com. Keep it simple. Use spaces to format the signature and keep it narrow so that it won't wrap around in small windows.
   
   
8. Junk mail. Do not sign "guestbooks" or let your email address be used on web pages except where necessary. Spammers, organizations who send unsolicited emails for get rich quick schemes, sex sites and other unwanted junk, run programs that search web sites for email addresses to build their mailing lists.

   If you get unsolicited spam or junk mail, always follow any instructions in the mail to be removed from the list.

   For your own pages, use a role account ("info@") instead of an account with a name ("ddfugitt@"). That should help cut down on junk mail.

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