I searched and couldn’t really find anything relevant.
Would it be possible to allow a non-member to send the forum administrator (of my own forum) a private message? Or perhaps be able to provide a link or a form or some way of contacting the administrator without having to log in or become a member?
I don’t think this exists, and the idea has been shut down before – but if you must have a way to do it, you could provide a link to external contact form, like a free one at Tally.
This link could appear in your /about section or as a Custom Header Link.
thank you
I have an email link in the about page, I guess that will have to due
Ok, but you might find that invites spambots. A form with reCAPTCHA isn’t foolproof, but least the destination address can’t get harvested and shared.
I think Nathan had some luck with forcing email-in for the admin group, if that’s any help?
(Though even better if the UI allowed it 
)
Though I think you could also create a custom group especially for this particular use case and use the UI for that.
the email address has been posted on the about page for about a year, so far I haven’t had a problem. It is a very low volume site. If it becomes a problem I’ll remove the link and delete the address. I have the opposite problem.
the topic ToddZ posted mostly wrote off the idea as inviting abuse. I wouldn’t want this as a general feature for all users, just a way of people being able to contact me without having to join my forum. Posting my email obviously does invite spambots and abuse.
If a simply button on the About page allowed a non-member or non-logged in member to post a private message to one account it would (IMHO) help me drive engagement. I have, as I suspect most forums have, a lot of lurkers who seem unwilling to join. If it got out of control, have a simple way to turn it off.
And since I’m here, I’ll give my exact use case:
I do live events. I sometimes offer prizes (t-shirts) to viewers/participants. I would like a way for people to be able to contact me to get their prize shipped. I don’t want them to have to join the forum to claim their prize. It is enough that they know about us, maybe later they will end up joining.
Thanks
Andy
I’m pretty sure this still works. Allow-pm-to-staff
Thank you sir!
I could have swore I had seen this option, must have been perusing thru the plugins awhile back. Thank you
quick question if I could. How would this be implemented? will the message button just show up on the users page?
Does that also work for anon/non-logged in users too?
No. You have to be a user to create a topic.
I have created a plugin that will allow an anonymous user to fill out at form and send a pm.
I use it at https://www.formhoster.com/ and Contact Us - Literate Computing. It’s not public right now, at least.
I don’t think so. An account looks like it’s needed for the PM to send.
If you want anonymous user to create a topic you can use email-in. That creates a topic and replies go to the user.
Sorry. I missed that you wanted non-members. (Even though it’s the title? 
)
You’ll need to configure a group or category to accept email from non members and have them email. That’ll do what you want.
To send a message in discourse you have to be a user.
It might be possible to make a plugin that would essentially do the same thing that sending an email does. It’d be tricky to get it to render the composer, I think, but it should be possible.
This is precisely how we set things up here. If you want to reach our moderators e.g. about a problem with your account, you can email Moderators@discourse.org. It barely ever happens however even though it’s listed on the about page.
I seem to recall @awesomerobot had posited a neat idea a while back, to allow people to reply and create their account as a second step to creating a post. But that is not what we are talking about here.
I believe this approach will stage the email sender as a “staged user” so the communication should be connected to them if they become (or are) a member using the same email address.
Oof, don’t know why I didn’t think of this. I actually set it up myself a long time ago!
(My intent was a little different – I wanted fully anon intake from an external form to a category, but details didn’t work out and I tabled the idea.)
I think for moderators and the other automatic groups you’d need to use the rails workaround of Nathan’s I linked above ( Allow non-members to pm the administrator - #5 by JammyDodger ), but I think creating a new custom group for this could be easier if you’re not tied to one of the automatic ones.
(Though an excellent advocate for adding it to the UI if you fancied adding the use case to Allow email in for moderators, staff, and admins )
I think it should be possible to build that email address into a theme component that displays a button on the about page. 
For anons/logged out it would always open in their email, but that’s pretty close.
Yup! We created a new custom group to receive moderators@discourse.org email. 