Miss Google Groups already?
Actually, now hold onto your hats, Google Groups wasn’t really Google Groups. Um. There were groups on Google, true, but for the most part Google Groups was Google’s portal to something called Usenet.
YOU CAN REPLACE GOOGLE GROUPS FOR FREE!
Google Groups were never Google Groups, they were Usenet groups. Google didn’t create them, certainly didn’t control them. They simply gave you access to them. And you can still get access to all those groups. For free.
See the beauty of Google Groups was that it was one-stop-shopping. You just signed into Google, which you probably already were for gmail and personal content, then if you pointed your browser to Groups you were there. So Google Groups made Usenet convenient.
More convenient.
Before Google Groups and now today, with Google Groups murdered off, you need two things to read and write to those same groups you could reach with Google alone. You need a “Client” to read and write to the groups.
A “Client” is a program or app you load onto your computer. This lets you access groups – read them, post new messages. If you’re on an Apple machine then your choices are limited here but a really good one is Mozilla’s Thunderbird.
CAREFUL!
It’s easy to get discouraged with Thunderbird. It just won’t work! And then the next day, give or take a day, assuming you followed instructions and did everything right, it will suddenly work. And keep working.
BUT YOU NEED SOMETHING ELSE!
So you need a client – a program – to read groups and post to them. But you also need access to a Usenet server – a machine where all the groups and their messages are stored.
Think of it like email, because that’s what it’s like: You open your email “Client” – whatever you use to read & write email – and it connects to a server, downloads your new emails. Then when you write an email this “Client” connects to that server again, uploads it and sends it to the next machine.
Over simplified but, Usenet (what you thought of as Google Groups) works the same way. Thunderbird is a “Client” that attaches to the server, like the way your email app attaches to the mail server, so all that’s missing is a server for Thunderbird to connect to.
Here’s one:
www.eternal-september.org
Eternal September Usenet Server
eternal-september.org
Create an account. It’s free. It’s very easy. They’ll give you the address of the server – the address you configure in Thunderbird – and they’ll mail you a username and password.
PLENTY OF INSTRUCTIONS ONLINE!
You can Google “Thunderbird eternal september” and find advice on getting it all to work. But, like I said, be warned: As far as I can tell I did everything right and it still didn’t work. It was frustrating. It was maddening. And then suddenly it worked and I don’t know what if anything I did differently. So be prepared for that.
And this was the case for me, on Apple. There are other “Clients” available for you if you’re on Windows. Forte Agent is a good one, but they’re like $27 a year. On the bright side, if you don’t mind spending a few bucks to replace Google Groups, Forte Agent will sell you a “Client” and the Usenet feed (the server access): One Stop Shopping. Should make configuring the app a lot easier!
