The New User Guide does not mention Messaging. Is there anything written on this in this simple tutorial mode? I need to educate my users to message instead of clogging threads with PM’s. I see that messaging is not obvious to new users on my forum, most of whom have come from old fashioned mailing lists and have never user a forum before.
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Hello!
We can always add this to the new user guide if that’s what you would like? I guess it depends what the users are trying to message such as a group.
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Person to person. It’s not obvious how to do this, or even that such a function exists, to newbies on the forum, I have found. Would be great to add a section to the New User Guide.
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I too use to be confused until I leaned these three things.
- To see your mailbox like you might expect with an e-mail reader
a. Click on you user icon in the upper right
b. Click on the envelope
c. Click on the envelope a second time (It was the second click that I did not realize was needed)
This will reveal the classic e-mail app buttons such as
1. New Message - For creating a new personal message (PM)
2. Inbox - Where your received personal messages are held
3. Sent - Personal messages that you have sent. Look here if you sent something and did not yet get a reply.
4. Archive - I have not used this yet so can not elaborate.
- Use the theme Iconified Header Links to add the inbox to the header links, e.g.
To add this component theme requires admin access. The settings are
Header links: Personal inboxes,inbox,https://<site>/my/messages,vdm,self
svg icons: inbox
You will need to replace <site> with your specific site. For Discourse forum <site> would be meta.discourse.org and the full URL would be https://meta.discourse.org/my/messages.
Also note that the use of my instead of a specific user like me u/EricGT in the links above. It is a nice trick to remember when giving specific URLs to the site members.
- Using a direct URL to the messages, https://<site>/my/messages
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I think it’s a bit easier to point out how to get to the messages tab of your user profile:
- select your user avatar
- select your username for shortcuts
- select “messages”
If you wish to message a particular user from within a topic, it might be easier to select their avatar then select the message button.
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Definitely a good idea! Maybe suggest the flag and then send @xxxxxx a message