Setting up a fake proxy server w/ Internet Explorer

[Robert Sullivan]

Andrew suggested:

>Try making the URLs as general as possible...use www.umi.com...without any
>subdirectories.  This also holds true for using the fake proxy on Netscape
>and helps eliminate a lot of problems.

I tried it for the first time with IE4 a few weeks ago and ran into the same
thing.  At first I thought it was because my line was too long, but either
there's no limit or it's very high.

My solution was the same as Andrew's.  I suspect that in practical terms, this
is not a problem.  It really doesn't matter if the general surfer can go to
other places on UMI's site, because that's probably not what they want.

Since I like to live on the edge, I decided that we could use the proxy
settings to promote some local interest material on our Web site while still
restricting general net access.  Property assessments and local history are the
most heavily used sections, and I wanted to make them more available.

For the assessments, I only had to add our domain.  The history and genealogy
covered many offsite links, beginning with LC, our state library and
ancestry.com, as well as many personal pages from local and remote
genealogists.

Technically, adding something like members.aol.com to the allowed list could
let them break out if someone had the right links on their page, but I will
monitor this and remove it if it becomes a problem.  The only annoying part
could be maintenance (adding new URLs to my list, now in excess of 200
characters), but I'm trying to improve access to resources which I have spent a
lot of time developing.  Besides, danger is my business. :-)

Bob Sullivan                               scp_sulli at sals.edu
Schenectady County Public Library (NY)     http://www.scpl.org