Q. When is BostonGlobe.com launching, and what is it?
A. BostonGlobe.com, a new subscription-only website put together by the staff of The Boston Globe, is live today. To read all of the stories that appear in the newspaper, you must now go to BostonGlobe.com. The site will also feature breaking news updates, exclusive videos and photo galleries, and other content produced by Globe journalists.
The site is designed to combine the sensation of reading the daily print newspaper with vivid multimedia features and easy online navigation. As part of an effort to create the most comfortable reading environment, users will not encounter online pop-up, pop-under, or page takeover ads, although there will be limited advertising on the site.
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Q. What about Boston.com?
A. Boston.com will remain free. It will continue to offer full daily sports coverage, breaking news updates, online features, and lifestyle information, as well as five stories selected from each day’s print edition.
Boston.com will also include summaries and headlines of stories on BostonGlobe.com, but you must be a subscriber to read those stories in full. Boston.com is also in the process of adding two dozen new blogs, primarily related to business, consumers, and nightlife.
Q. If I link to a BostonGlobe.com story on Twitter, Facebook, or e-mail, can others see the full story? What about if I come across a BostonGlobe.com story when I search on Google or Bing?
A. BostonGlobe.com allows people who click through on links via search engines, social media, and e-mail to view, without charge, the full text of a story. Access is limited to that one story.
Q. What’s the cost?
A. The site will be free for the rest of September because of a promotion by residential real estate company Coldwell Banker. After that, BostonGlobe.com costs $3.99 a week for a digital-only subscription. That price is less than the paper’s seven-day home delivery cost of $12.25 a week for subscribers within the Boston region, but more than Sunday-only home delivery of $3.50 a week.
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Q. If I subscribe to the paper, must I pay for BostonGlobe.com?
A. No, all home-delivery customers, including Sunday-only, get free access.
Q. How do I see the site?
A. Go to BostonGlobe.com and enter a temporary username, e-mail address, and password for free access during September. Later this month, newspaper subscribers, registered users of Boston.com, and readers who signed up for the free trial of BostonGlobe.com will receive instructions for subscribing to the website.
Q. Do I need to do anything to take advantage of BostonGlobe.com features?
A. Though the site functions on almost all devices with a browser, its advanced features work best on the most recent version of browsers and those that support programming language HTML5, such as the latest versions of Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari. Certain features such as the “My Saved’’ function, which allows you to save a copy of a story for offline reading, are not available in Internet Explorer 7 or 8.
If you are browsing headlines on an iPhone and want to save a story to read later, touch the headline with two fingers to reveal the “My Saved’’ buttons. If you are reading the story on your iPhone and want to save it, hit the save button at the top of the story with one finger. Offline features of “My Saved’’ are available by bookmarking the “My Saved’’ section and visiting through this bookmark to refresh your stories just before you go offline.
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Q. What if I have questions?
A. You can call 617-929-2233. Online chat help is also available on the site, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.