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? [image] Allow email in for moderators, staff, and admins UX Well, since nobody told me that was completely stupid, I’ve gone and tested this rails command on a little used instance. And it seems to work (so far)! bangbang Use at your own risk and backup first To add an email-in address Group.where(name: "=groups.name=").update(incoming_email: "=groups.name=@=domain=") To remove an email-in address Group.where(name: "=groups.name=").update(incoming_email: nil) (Though even better if the UI allowed it :slight_smile:) 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

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. plugin.rb main add_to_class(:guardian, :can_send_private_message?) do |target, notify_moderators: false| return false unless authenticated? plugin.rb main # User is authenticated authenticated? &&

Allow non-members to pm the administrator

Product Support

pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman) December 21, 2025, 9:27pm 7

I’m pretty sure this still works. Allow-pm-to-staff

Topic		Replies	Views
1 to 1 PM vs Group Messaging Product Support	8	2743	February 20, 2017
Create a PM via email Feature	4	862	January 25, 2022
Private messages to a group, or other means to handle private support requests Feature	19	11399	April 7, 2020
Is it possible to disable private messaging for a specific user? Product Support	31	10087	November 1, 2017
Send a Personal Message to an Email Address Announcements new-feature	16	4991	January 13, 2022

Allow non-members to pm the administrator

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