What's the best workflow to maximize NewsBin's usefullness

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Below I'll lay out the most common ways the regulars have developed for using NewsBin v5.0. Not only will these methods hopefully save you time when doing your newsgroup chores, but they are also the most tested methods of using NewsBin, and may result in a more pleasant overall experience as well.

Traditional Browsing

Setup

First up is some organizational skills. v5.0 allows you to group your newsgroups into folders. Make use of this to categorize your groups, putting groups with common posts into their own folder.

Now, if you want your posts to automatically download into nicely organized directories, doing so is easy. Not only is there the usual Folder Mode available in the options, but you can now customize the download path for each individual group, or folder! Just right click on the line you're interested in in the groups tab, and go to Properties. There, you can set a number of options, including the Download Path. When you load that group, or folder, any posts you queue up from there will now go to that path.

If there are any posts you are not interested in seeing in any particular group, or you only want to see specific ones, you should use Filter Profiles, and apply them to the groups you want those limitations for.

If you want to reduce memory usage, you also have the Max Post Age setting to set.

One of the most useful new features of v5.0 is Auto Headers. What this allows you to do is have NewsBin automatically keep your headers up to date without your intervention. Definitely turn this on, and then remember to hit the Update button whenever you start NewsBin.

Ok, we're finally ready to start looking at some posts.

Downloading

First, if you haven't yet already, hit the Update button to make sure NewsBin is keeping your headers up to date. If you already did this, you can move right along, otherwise you will want to wait until the headers are done downloading for the first folder you want to view.

Then, right click on the folder you are interested in, and choose "Show Posts". In the resulting post list tab, I prefer to keep Compact Mode and Show New turned on. This reduces the number of lines I have to scroll through, and can make the size filter a little bit nicer to use as well.

All that's left is selecting the posts you want to download, and queuing them up. It's also quite handy to put any PAR2 files, and other files you may need later into the scratch list, where they will be easy to find later should you need them.

Finally, if you don't want to see any posts again, mark them as read by using the delete key. If you're done with them all, you can use Mark All Read instead, to mark any posts hidden by your filters as well.

When you're done with the group, close the tab.

In 5.05 there is a new feature called Auto-Show that will display new headers in the post list as they are downloaded, but I personally don't trust it enough to use. If you do, you can leave the tab open, and new headers will automatically be displayed as they arrive, saving you from reloading the tab.

NZB Users

Setup

The easiest way to use NZB files is through the Autoload function.

Downloading

Once that's enabled, all you have to do is start NewsBin, then save any NZBs you want to retrieve into the autoload directory you specified. NewsBin will automatically download all the files needed, and place the PAR2 files in the scratch list, in case they come in handy later.