The plugin discourse-allow-pm-to-staff allows users who normally cannot send private messages to PM specific staff groups. pfaffman provides the initial overview, including configuration options such as allow_pm_allowed_pm_groups (defaulting to “staff”) and repository links.
Early discussion focused on resolving bugs. rahim123 reported issues with group pages failing to load, which pfaffman and Kushalghosh9899 confirmed were fixed in subsequent commits. Configuration support for multiple groups was clarified by RGJ and pfaffman, who specified that groups must be separated by a pipe | without spaces, a setting type that RGJ suggested adding to improve usability.
A naming discrepancy between the plugin name and directory was noted by rahim123, which pfaffman agreed to fix. Usage questions from Andrew_Rowe were addressed by nathank, who clarified the plugin applies only to logged-in users, not anonymous visitors.
Significant compatibility issues arose with Discourse version 2026.7.0+. Roi and pmcpa reported errors preventing PMs from sending, linked to a private_message_context argument mismatch in the plugin’s code. pfaffman acknowledged the breakage and noted a lack of funding for maintenance. However, pmcpa provided support, leading pfaffman to update the plugin, fix the core compatibility issue, and update tests. pmcpa and Roi confirmed that the updated plugin works correctly.
Hello! First of all, I wanted to thank you for such a wonderful plugin
Yesterday I installed this plugin on my forum, but I still couldn’t set up more than one group. When adding group names to the line, I tried using : ; , with and without a space, I even tried not to insert characters between the names (leaving only spaces), nothing helped - the line only supports one group. Tell me what am I doing wrong?
For example I want to achieve the following:
LOL. Yeah. That just might do it. Thanks very much.
It was long ago that I wrote this. It was at the edge of my ability and I wasn’t very good at finding out what types were available what magic type: group_list would do.
This definitely needs some cleaning up, but it’s serviing the needs of the person I wrote it for, so I keep not touching it.
I’ll add this to my list, but I’ve got a bunch of other non-paying work that’s in line ahead of this one.
It’s not a big deal, but I’m still seeing this message during upgrades:
Running post deploy migrations
$ bundle exec rake multisite:migrate
Plugin name is 'discourse-allow-pm-to-staff', but plugin directory is named 'allow-pms-to-staff'
I even tried manually renaming the plugin directory in the container, but it eventually gets reverted.
The plugin enables logged in users who wouldn’t normally be allowed to PM people to PM people in the @staff group. Unfortunatey it doesn’t do anything for anon (i.e. those who aren’t logged in).
This is why I used this little hack:
I’ve used that for years without issue (except the odd bit of spam).
Deeply grateful for the quick tip