This article focuses specifically on the private messaging settings — how to turn them on or off, and what effect each setting has on your residents' experience.
What Private Messaging Is
When private member-to-member messaging is enabled, residents can send emails to other individual residents through the site's messaging interface. Depending on your settings, this can be done with or without exposing the sender's email address.
How to Enable or Disable
- Navigate to Administer Site > Modules > Messaging > Settings.
- Find the Allow Member-to-Member Messages setting.
- Set it to On to allow residents to message each other, or Off to disable it.
- If you enable member-to-member messages, the Allow Private Messages option appears:
- Set to On to send messages without revealing the sender's email address (the recipient replies via a link).
- Set to Off to include the sender's email address in the message.
- Click Save.
Choosing the Right Setting for Your Community
- Allow Member-to-Everyone Messages: Off — Recommended for most communities. Prevents residents from inadvertently sending mass emails to all members.
- Allow Member-to-Member Messages: On with Allow Private Messages: On — A good balance: residents can contact each other, but email addresses remain private.
- Allow Member-to-Member Messages: Off — Use this if you want all resident communication to go through the board.
Tip: Disabling Member-to-Everyone messages is strongly recommended unless you have a specific reason to allow it. Once a resident sends a community-wide email, it cannot be unsent. Enabling can lead to unsolicited emails to all residents.