Forgive my silly questions - we’re in the process of upgrading our very old (pre-Chat-as-Core) install to the latest version. We’re trying to figure out if we want to activate Chat. What’s the difference/pros-cons between Chat and Messages? We have turned off ‘Enable public channels based on c…

[image] Martyn Thomas: What’s the difference/pros-cons between Chat and Messages? From what I understand from doing some searches here on Meta, chat and messages are unrelated. You can imagine a personal message as a normal topic that’s searchable, albeit ‘private’ and permanent [1] . However,…

[image] Martyn Thomas: We have turned off ‘Enable public channels based on categories.’ yet the Chat popup defaults to the ‘Channels’ tab rather than DMs - is there a way to hide the Channels tab? Completely agree that this is a problem for sites where Channels are much less important. I’ve …

Thanks for your help guys Sounds like the two areas are doing the same thing - allowing members to communicate - in similar but different ways. Looks like we’ll turn it off for now - and revisit it if/when the two messaging methods are merged.

[image] Martyn Thomas: Looks like we’ll turn it off for now - and revisit it if/when the two messaging methods are merged. I don’t think they will ever be merged – they serve very different purposes. Chat is ephemeral and is used to have quick discussions with people. PMs are permanent and ar…

[image] Hawk: PMs are permanent and are therefore used for private discussions that may need to be revisited in the future. In my opinion, the one key change needed to make this work really well would be for PMs to be treated as Private Topics (rather than messages) for those sites who have c…

[image] ondrej: DMs tab it combines individual chats and group chat notifications - not showing the difference. Someone can correct me here. Correct. The only difference would be that a private DM shows the avatar of the other user, a group DM will have a number showing the amount of particip…

@nathank I reckon this is worth a new topic. Want me to split it out?

I think one downside of using Messages is that the email notifications are sent through the user’s own server, which may be subject to rate limits or quota restrictions.

Chat vs Messages

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roke_julian_lockhart (Mr Beedell, Roke Julian Lockhart) May 31, 2026, 10:49pm 14

@HAWK, I’d say so. He’s said it in a few places, and it’s a compelling request.

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Chat vs Messages

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