I tried to use something called whisper for private (person to person) messaging. It uses pusher in the background and is hugely problematic. The pusher service it uses is the free plan, which means it simply cannot handle any load before it just stops working, and I suspect that causes problems. I can’t even scroll down to earlier messages without errors. These are the things I’m not happy with.
- I don’t know where these PMs are stored or how secure it is
- Messages cannot be deleted
- Too many errors
- I think it causes some people browser problems with the forum
- It simply doesn’t do what we need
- A forum is about public, not private messaging
I have uninstalled Whisper: see below.
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. My suggestion is that 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 signature, as I have done. If placing a classified advert, it’s also extremely useful to add as a contact. 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
