Congratulations! We've now grown to a community membership of over 500!!
No doubt many of you would like to ask other members in private for more information, see how they are going, etc. This site supports Private Messaging so you can catch up on other members on a one on one basis without disclosing your email or other contact details, with group conversations also supported.
To do so, click on the "Members" tab in the middle of the purple menu bar (between "Polls" and "About us"). You should get:
"Just joined!
These members have just joined. Why not say hello?"
Under that there's a 5 column list of the last 30 members that have joined. (Yes indeed, why not say hello?)
Above "Just joined!" there's a search box that returns a drop down list of all member names that match the letter(s) you've entered, up to a maximum of 20 - even before you click on the magnifying glass. (This means that if there are more than 20 matches, you may not see the member you are searching for - so just type in some more letters from their user name until their name appears.) Note that you can use consecutive letters from anywhere in the users name - you don't have to remember what the name starts with, so neil will find me even if you can't remember that I'm an Aussie ;).
Click on the name you are after and then click on the magnifying glass icon to get a new page, which shows the last activity by that member (Questions and Posts can also be selected) plus the opportunity on the right of the page to "Send a message". If you click on the "Send a message" button, you can then send a PM and further, you can add additional recipients via the "Find a member" search box on that page. When you've completed and sent your PM, your recipient(s) will get an email, letting them know that you have contacted them.
When they reply, you'll also get an email notification with a link to their reply. Click on the link to see their reply in full and reply if you wish to. If you've had a lengthy conversation, you'll have to page down to find their latest reply.
This site also lets you know if you have any messages awaiting your attention. If you have any unanswered or unacknowledged messages, you'll see a red spot containing the number of outstanding messages in the middle of your profile picture. To access them, just click on your profile image/user name and select "Messages".
You can then manage your messages via the "Select all", "Mark selected as read" and "Delete selected"
buttons. If you reply to a message or select it and click on the "Mark selected as read" button, you'll see the number in the red dot in your profile picture decrease by one.
Then of course there's the easy way of just clicking on a member's name when it appears against a recent reply, posting, etc. This takes you to the same user profile page for that member where you can see their recent activity and send them a PM.
Happy PM-ing!
Neil