The forum has no private messaging function, fortunately, we are non-commercial, so we don’t need the private messaging feature except where it suits individual members to be contactable, e.g. When selling something in classifieds.
If you want to be reachable for any reason, place a link to a disposable e-mail that can be changed at any time in your bio (accessed via your profile), as I have done. There is an important reason to place it in your bio, only members can see the bio, so the spambots and spammers can’t harvest it. If spammers join just to get e-mail addresses, I can also deal with that should it start to happen with a further tweak.
Then in your signature put a contact me link in that looks like this. The Contact me should be made a link, with the target URL being https://coffeetime.freeflarum.com/u/"Your forum username"
Which in my case is https://coffeetime.freeflarum.com/u/DavecUK
I am using the free version of https://simplelogin.io/ I actually liked it because when you reply to a message sent to the disposable e-mail service it actually shields your e-mail in any reply you do, and of course there is a free package! The advantages I see are:
No one has any of your message data, apart from you and the recipient (not held on the forum)
If a spammer gets on the forum, they can’t spam the pm system like they did on CFUK
I don’t have to worry at all about private messaging
You don’t have to worry about private messaging
If someone spams the disposable e-mail, simply bin it and set up another.
It keeps the forum software leaner…less is sometimes more
Please don’t use the spam function of you’re email provider as simplelogin get a spam strike, which you don’t want.