What's the difference between a HOME PAGE, a WEB PAGE, and a WEBSITE ?
A web page is any single page that you look at. A web site is a group of pages that are all connected on a specific theme (such as, this is a bondage website). Many people have a site that is only a single page (not a bunch of pages), and if it has personal content, it's usually called their Home Page.  Click here for an example of a Home Page.

What's a LINK ?
You can call a link a URL, since it's basically the same thing. A link is a line or picture that you click on to go to another web page -- to another "URL."  This is a link.

What's a BROWSER?
A browser is a program that you use to look at web pages.  The most commonly used browsers are:  Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, the AOL browser, and the amazing Opera browser.

What's a PROVIDER?
A provider is a company or system that helps you get connected to the internet, and provides a way for your computer to get web pages etc. off of the internet.  Some common providers are Compuserve, America Online (AOL), WebTV, and Mindspring.

What's a URL?
The URL is the "address" for each web page, and it's pretty funny looking. Here's an example:

http://www.bedroombondage.com/links/index.html

http://

www.

bedroombondage

.com

/links/

index.html

The prefix tells your computer what kind of computer communi-
cation this will be.  The prefix is usually http or ftp.

This identifies that the page is part of the web. A webpage doesn't have to be on the World Wide Web to be a webpage. Weird, huh? So some addresses don't have the "www" part.

This part of the address is the "domain" -- who the heck it is.   BondageU is the name of this website, but sometimes this "who it is" section of the address doesn't really match the name of the website.

This tells you what kind of site it is. .com = commercial .org = organization .net = network, etc.

Any section framed with a slash identifies a part of the website -- a group of pages or pictures about a specific topic.  In this case, this is the main area of my site.

When you see the magic .htm or .html, you know this is the end of the address.  The .html tail tells you that "index" is a specific page.

EMAIL

How do email addresses look different from webpage addresses?
I know this is an important question for new people online, because I often see them mix up the two.  Here's an example of an email address:

newbie@bondageu.com

newbie

@

bondageu

.com

The first part of an email address is personal -- it's the section that is specific to you, almost like your street address. Often there are numbers mixed in with a name.
Email addresses do not have a "www" in them.

The next part is a @ symbol. If you're saying it out loud to someone, you say that part as "at."  If someone tells you their email address but it's missing the @, it's not going to work at all.

The third and fourth part of the address identify what company or service ("provider") is taking care of your mail for you. Examples: aol.com or uu.net .

Once again, the ending part tells you what kind of service is handling this email address.  .com = company, .org = organization, .net = network.  There are other suffix categories too.  Said out loud, this suffix would be called "dot com."

EMAIL ETIQUETTE:
Don't write with all capital letters. In internet culture, capital letters are used to communicate SHOUTING, so if you type all caps, people will think you're mad at them.
Don't reply to an email unless you have new information. This is because many people are overloaded with email, and it's not appreciated if they open an email from you that says "Thank you for answering my email. Bye." That just wastes their time.
Check your return ("Reply-To") email address. Many people program it in wrong, and then get mad when they don't get replies to their emails. If you send emails with errors, the replies might never find their way back to you.
When you fill out forms, make sure you don't put a typo into your email address. This is another common reason that people don't answer email -- because they don't have the right address from you.
If you're an AOL customer, and you want people to write back to you when you send them an email, make sure you don't have an "AOL filter" activated.  It might refuse a lot of the emails that people are trying to send to you!
Click here for Gene Wicker's cool overview of email etiquette.

"CHAT" and IRC

Another part of the internet is IRC, or Internet Relay Chat. This is a cool way for you to write back and forth (live, real time) with another person or a whole group of people. There are a lot of bondage and BDSM and fetish chat places too.
Usually, to use IRC, you have to download a program that will connect you to other chatters. My favorite one is MIRC.

Chat can also be done on the web instead of on IRC.  Some websites have their own chatrooms.  If you particularly like a website, try to find a chatroom in it, because you'll probably find people you like there.
When you first go into any chatroom, just say hello and then sit and read the dialogue for a while.  You'll find that most groups use a certain etiquette of communication, so you don't want to jump in too fast or you'll accidentally offend somebody.  Click here for an example of a Chatroom.

THE USENET

Think of the Usenet as a bulletin board in space. You go and stick a note on the board. Someone else comes later and reads it, and writes a note underneath it. It's a slower form of communicating than "chat," but nice because of its semi-permanence -- you can find long dialogues on certain topics. The Usenet used to be much cooler before roving bands of advertisers took it over and made it into a huge mess.
You can access the Usenet with your browser.  For instance, with Netscape, select Window / NetscapeNews.

FINDING STUFF

Search Engines are the best way to find stuff on the Internet. A search engine is kind of like a Yellow Pages. You look something up by subject -- such as Bondage -- and you're given a bunch of different places to choose from.
Here are several good search engines:
YAHOO is good if you're looking for a company or a general topic, such as Fetish or BDSM.   It's also good for browsing, because you can start with their main categories, click on a topic that interests you, and look at the lists of websites.
GOOGLE is good if you're looking for something very specific such as "hogtied", "suspension", "bound and gagged" or "Darla Crane".
ALTAVISTA is good if you need a general language-translation of a webpage.

If you find a webpage you like, but don't want to go back every week to see if it's been updated, have a free service go and check the page for you. They'll email you if the page gets changed.  Try Netmind's "Mind-It" for this service.

Some websites are actually fake websites that are just set up to pull you through, to read porn ads. If you go to a website because it advertised "bondage," and the first 3 pages you click through don't have bondage, give up -- don't keep foraging. They're just yanking your chain.

"ERROR 404 - NOT FOUND"
Sometimes you'll get this computerized message when you try to go see a page. It doesn't mean you've hit a dead end. Sometimes it just means that the address used to end with /june and now it ends with /july. To sleuth out what happened to the webpage, find the URL box near the top of your screen, and erase the last word of the URL, until you erase a   /  (a slash) . Then hit enter and see what loads. Keep backing up like that to see if you find a path to the new page. Click here for an example of a 404 message.  Delete the ending and delete a slash, and you'll be able to explore the site.

PERKS OF THE WEB

BOOKMARKS
Your browser will let you "save" the address of websites you like, so that you can visit them again some other day.  Browsers label this perk different ways, but look for a category at the top of your screen called "bookmarks" or "favorites."

GUESTBOOKS
Many companies provide free Guestbooks to people who have websites, so you'll see a lot of them. You write a message to the website owner, or to the other visitors of the website, and it appears on their Guestbook page. Everyone can read it, so don't write things that you want kept private.  Click here to see an example of a Guestbook.

JAVA
I'm going to explain this non-technically because it will make more sense. Think of Java as a tiny little program all its own, hitched onto a web page like a backpack. When you view the webpage, this little backpack comes alive and opens up and does something special -- sometimes a visual effect, sometimes an interactive box. Not all browsers understand Java yet, so sometimes you might just see a sign that says "your browser doesn't understand this java applet."

JPGs
Pronounced "JayPegs". These are pictures that you can view on web pages (or view them alone). If you like bondage pictures, you'll find yourself saving a lot of JPGs.   I suggest you save them in an organized system, or soon you'll have chaos.  If you save everything on your hard drive, make folders named for each website where you get JPGs; if you save onto disks, label each disk for a website.  If you organize pics that way, then when you're looking at all your JPGs later, you can tell which websites you liked and want to visit again.  Click here for an example of a JPG (you will have to use your "BACK" button to get out of it afterward).

GIFs
Pronounced with a hard "G". Gifs are pictures too, but they're usually smaller and are little logos, buttons, and things like that.  Here's an example of a gif:

AOL AGONY

Your Prehistoric AOL Browser
AOL is known as A-O-hell for many reasons. One reason is that the browser they have you using is, pardon my language, fucked. It won't always read web and internet language correctly. Sometimes it will goof up on passwords, other times it won't let you see what others see online. If your inferior AOL browser gets too irritating, try this:

First, go online with your AOL browser.  Leave it running while you open a second browser.  (If your computer has Windows, you probably have another browser already!)  Click your Start button in the lower left corner of your screen.  Select Programs, then look for Microsoft Internet Explorer.  (It might be in one of the Program sub-categories.  Open Internet Explorer right over your AOL browser.  Now you can use Explorer to surf the web much more easily. (Watch for time-outs; once in a while you need to touch the AOL page just to keep it connected.)

AOL's Advertisement Attacks
Get those damn ads out of your AOL service: Enter keyword myaol. Click "preferences." Pick "marketing preferences." Click Set Up Now. Find the lines with the red squiggle logo and click those to change your settings.

Leaving the AOL Nest
When you're finally comfortable with the basics of the web and email, and you're sick of being held back by AOL, it'll be time to get a regular provider instead.  You can sign up for a new service and still keep AOL too during the transition.  Click here for a list of providers.

PRIVACY
HOW TO COVER YOUR BUTT

Some people are worried about their online surfing because they don't want their family members to find out later what they were looking at.

They're also concerned about what strangers can find out about them online, for the following reason:

Each time your computer asks for a web page from another computer, the two computers trade information about you.  The information shared is usually: What your IP# is (kind of like an i.d. number for your computer), what web page you're looking at right now, what web page you're asking to see next, what kind of browser you're using, and which provider is transmitting this request for you.

Now, don't panic!  The main reason for this is computer-dialogue is so that website owners can figure out how to change and improve their websites.  For instance, data from my BedroomBondage website tells me various important things, such as:

* The free tour is the visitors' favorite section of my site.  So I update it more often than other free sections.
* People find my sites mostly because of Yahoo, Google, and Bondage Directory - Therefore, I try to work with those sites to make sure they keep listing me and sending people to me.

So that's why websites ask your computer (and everyone else's computers) for data.

However!  If I were really curious about one person specifically, and if I really cared, YES, I could dig through 40,000 lines of data to find out where your computer logged on from and which page your computer looked at.  This is what makes some people feel like their privacy is being compromised online.

So if all of this makes you feel paranoid, here are some steps to take:

1. YOUR IDENTITY

Your computer has a name -- possibly your name -- somewhere inside of it. That name is secretly embedded into every email you send out. So if you want to improve your privacy, you need to find that name and change it to something vague. Click your Start button, select Settings, Control Panel, Network, and Identification. Change the name to something like "Anonymous."

2. EMAIL

Don't give out your email address to anyone you don't know and trust (unless you're prepared to wade through 50 spammy emails a day that are trying to sell you distressed real estate and scat porn videos).

Use web-based email so that you never have to store your email inside your own computer. It will be stored for you somewhere out in cyberspace, where only you can find it and see it, via your secret password.  See, if you're using your regular-access email (such as newbie@aol.com,) your email is going to end up being stored in your computer, where others can dig it up and read it (especially nosy offpsring).
Hushmail.com can provide a free email service to you, and their system COMPLETELY REMOVES your private information from the email when it's sent, so that people can't trace your email back to your computer.
Free web-based email that is less private and less protected:
Yahoo (Click on "My Yahoo."  This is my favorite email service, because you can also set up your own "custom-made" web page that lists all your favorite websites on it.)
Hotmail (I don't recommend Hotmail, because it was a lot better before Microsoft bought it and took it over - now it's an incredibly irritating service with too many ads and railroaded paths.)

When you sign up for free email at any of these places, they often have a form asking you for all kinds of personal information, but you don't really have to tell them much about yourself. Heck, I only give them a first and last initial!

3. COOKIES

What ARE "cookies", anyway?  A cookie is a little piece of information that a website asks your computer to store for them!  Why?  So that next time you visit that site, it can read that cookie and give you specialized service.  For instance, when I visit the wonderful online bookstore Amazon.com, they know what kind of books I like (from last time I visited) and they let me know if any new books are up my alley.

Some people feel that cookies are intrusive.  If you feel that way, you can set your browser to refuse cookies.  Select Options/Preferences/Protocols.

4. SURFING

Change your browser settings and options. Set it to refuse cookies and warn you whenever information is being asked of your computer. If you're extra-paranoid, go online with Anonymizer.

Set your homepage at Iproxy (or Anonymizer).  Iproxy will provide you with guarded surfing.  Yes, they do ask for your info, but the only part you need to give correctly is a working email address.  Iproxy makes it nearly impossible for websites to know who the heck you are. Of course, it also means that some websites can't meet you halfway; for instance, you might not be able to sign Guestbooks or fill out surveys.

Empty your caches each time you finish surfing.  When you're done surfing each day, finish on an innocuous page.  Then, at the top of your browser, open Options, Network Preferences, and clear both of your caches. Then go to your RecycleBin/TrashCan and completely empty it.

Clear your History list.  Select Edit, Preferences, Navigator and click "Clear History".

Clear your pull-down list (it's an option of the white URL box near the top of your screen).  To clear the pull-down list, close all Netscape windows. Using Notepad (click Start button, select Programs/Accessories/Notepad), open this file:
c:\Program Files\Netscape\users\your_name\prefs.js
Look for the lines that begin
user_pref("browser.url_history.URL
You'll probably recognize the URLs (web addresses) that you visited in the rest of each line. Delete these lines and save the file. Restart Netscape and verify that they've disappeared from the Location box pull-down list.

Because of the hassle of clearing the pull-down list, it's best to avoid putting stuff there in the first place. When you enter a URL by hand, don't type it directly into the Location box. Select File, Open
Page (or hit CTL-O) and type the URL into the pop-up box. When you do it this way, the URL won't go into the pulldown list.

Clear your Documents off your Start Menu when you finish surfing.   Click your Start button, then select Settings/Taskbar/Start Menu Programs, and clear your documents menu.  (If you use Norton, also consider deleting all "protected files.")

Now all the websites that you visited are no longer accessible from main menus... in case you're worried that your family is going to be digging in your browser later.

That's my take on the basics!  You can read and learn even more by clicking your way to this big list of helpful websites:  Yahoo's World Wide Web Beginner's Guides

Thanks for joining me!