| Introduction |
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| The World Wide Conferencing Network (WWCN) is quite different from Internet Relay Chat (IRC) or any other conferencing environment. It may be difficult for unexperienced users to become familiar with WWCN. However, we feel that even unexperienced users should not have much trouble using WWCN. You can complete an online course here that will teach you the basics. After that, meeting people online and exchanging experiences will make an ace out of every user. |
| This online course includes examples showing you how to join channels, maintain them, list channels, find out where channels can be created and where not, and much, much more. If you have an operating system capable of running a web browser and an IRC client simultaneously, you'll be able to practice online. |
| First we'll make you familiar with the vocabulary used in this course. The first term is channel. Chatting in WWCN is, as in many conferencing systems, organised in groups, called channels. These groups are sometimes also called rooms, we'll stick to channels in this tutorial. A channel is identified by a name. Before you can talk in a channel, you must join it. |
| Before you join a channel, you must know its name. It's possible that you heard this name from friends, but you can also search for a nice channel yourself. The channels in WWCN are, unlike many other systems, organized in a "tree" like fashion. This means that you have directories, just like on a disk, and each directory may contain files (channels) and subdirectories. |
| Then, there's the server. This is a computer on the internet which stores and processes conferencing data. You will have to connect to one, before you can begin chatting. Currently no special requirements are needed to connect to a server. In time, however, you'll need to fill out a registration form on the web, and you'll get a password that you have to enter each time you connect to the conferencing server. |
| There's also a client program. This program takes care of connecting to the server and shows the conferencing data on your screen. It also reads the lines you type and transmits them to the server. Your client right now is probably an IRC client, but in time we hope to develop dedicated WWCP clients (World Wide Conferencing Protocol). |
| "Protocol? what's that?" you may think. A protocol is an agreement between parties, for example between your client and the server, targeted at performing some kind of task. In this case, the task is to receive and transmit conferencing data. The protocol that has been developed for the World Wide Conferencing Network (WWCN) is called "World Wide Conferencing Protocol" (WWCP). |