Before there was a World Wide Web, there was and still is an area of the Internet called the UseNet . This is a place with more than 30,000 discussion groups. The discussion groups here are called newsgroups. We will be using this protocol to offer Anglican news groups on our server. A newsgroup is an area of the Internet gathered around a particular interest.
Messages remain on the news server for a week or two before being automatically removed.
Newsgroups have an advantage over e-mail in that they live on another server and are read when you want as opposed to filling your mailbox every day. News readers and browsers give you the option of subscribing to a group, but this simply means that when you want to look at it, it will already be listed in your news reader. If you go on holidays, you don't need to unsubscribe, the messages only come to your machine when you look at them. Using a news group To follow a subject, you click on it. To read a posting, you click on it.