PChucks Network: How To Get The Most Out Of PChuck's Network

Welcome to PChuck's Network! Pchuck's Network is a Blog, and it's written in Hypertext. Note my general principles, that I state repeatedly in my various articles.

Please observe Legal Discretion when referencing articles posted here.

Please note my Privacy Statement, when you ask for advice in an open forum. There are several ways to contact me - in an online forum, by email, or thru my Guestbook. Most urgent help can be gotten by the first of the three.

Contacting Me
If your message contains a question about a network issue, I strongly suggest that you post a problem report in an open forum, where helpers like me can be found. There are two forums where I normally spend my time ("too much time", some would say):

Using online forums for help requests is a good idea, for several reasons.

You'll get better help with all the helpers able to see, together, the status of your problem, as it's resolved.
Many helpers keep their email addresses secret, and won't be interested in sharing them with strangers.
You encourage a spirit of community, which is what drives these forums in the first place.
You help provide an online record of problems and solutions, again strengthening the idea of using online forums for problem resolution.

If you're uncomfortable asking for help in an open forum, I'll ask that you read a some of my articles, to start:

If you feel the need to message me, whether to tell me how great PChuck's Network is (or to tell me what needs improvement, I can take it), or to ask for assistance (my resources and time permitting), Please Sign My Guestbook. If you provide an email address, only I will see it, and I will be able to write to you. And if you wish to leave additional, confidential details, you can make your entire message Private.

Until I start getting a lot more hits in my GuestBook, though, I'll probably not check it as often as the open forums. Also, my GuestBook doesn't integrate well with email, so I can't guarantee a quick (or immediately helpful) reply. So start with one of the above forums, if you require immediate assistance. Send me a private message, in my GuestBook, if you need special help, and are prepared to wait a while.

A Blog
A Blog is a work in progress. What you see here today may be rewritten, with more detail, tomorrow.

That being the case, you should not plan to get all the information in one visit. Read, what you have time to today, and plan to return here soon, and regularly. But when you return, how will you know what articles have been rewritten? I spend a lot of time rewriting existing articles, as well as writing new ones. Like this article.

As I write, and rewrite articles, I link the various articles to each other, and to other websites. I don't spend any time identifying each new article, or each updated article, in a list that you can examine. Any list would be only as useful as it is customised to fit the needs of each reader, and since each person is unique, this would be an impossible task.

If you would like to create and maintain a list of your own, so you can keep up with changes here, you can get a Newsfeed Reader. This will let you keep up with this website, and any others that interest you, without you having to tediously surf to each website, to look for changes.

The Newsfeed Reader, in combination with the newsfeed attached to the website, will tell you, at your convenience, when an article on PChuck is changed, and let you view the article. There are two conventions for newsfeeds - Atom, and RSS.

Right now, PChuck has an Atom feed, so you will need a Newsfeed Reader that is Atom compatible. If you have Firefox (and I hope that you do), you may get Sage, a free lightweight RSS and ATOM feed aggregator, as a Firefox extension. You could also get a standalone Newsfeed Reader. There are a dozen or so listed at AtomEnabled.

Hypertext
A Hypertext document is a document with many pages, and the various pages linked to each other. It uses the same structure as the web, except that all of the pages are part of the same website, and have the same style.

When you read a book, and you see a reference to another page in the book, you have to interrupt what you're reading, find the other page, read there, then find your way back. When you read Hypertext, you simply read what's there, and hit the Back button in your browser. You have to be able to recognise the links.

The links are there to simplify the reading process. If you're just looking for an overview, you can simply read each page.

Have I lost you? Click on one, and see what you get. Please. You'll be helping both of us.

Legal Permissions
PChuck's Network is subject to change at any moment. You, and your friends, will benefit the most by directly linking to the articles here. Permission is expressly granted for you to extract relevant contents of any article in PChuck's Network, and post the extracted material elsewhere on the web, or include it in email, if, and ONLY if, you include a working link, to the article from which you are extracting, in your extract. This is for your own good. The web, and this web site, is dynamic, so please use it that way.

You may, if you wish, extract relevant portions of articles, for inclusion in any paper documents. I strongly suggest that you include a link to the original article, and date of copying, if at all possible. Again, this is for your own good.

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