I today activated some new email functionality on the CLUAS Discussion Board. It works in a number of ways, both at the time a new user registers for the discussion board, and, also for those who are already registered on the discussion board. Further details below: What’s new now when a user registers for the discussion board? All new users on the board will now be automatically sent an email from CLUAS when they register for the discussion board. In this email there is a unique link that they must click upon to ‘validate’ their email address and, in so doing, activate their discussion board registration. They will not be able to make any postings to the discussion board until they have so ‘activated’ their registration. An advantage of this it will be impossible to register with a dud email account (e.g. blah@blah.com), which in turn has a whole load of advantages from the point of view of a nightmare scenario of CLUAS getting sued because some dodgy characters posted libellous stuff on the discussion board, etc,. etc. Those registered up to now do not have to do anything. Your existing user id and password remains the same and will continue to work as before. What’s new for registered users of the discussion board? Two things are new… First up, once you are signed in with your discussion board user id and are reading through an existing topic you will see at the top of the topic (and also at the very bottom) that there is now a new link that says “Send Topic to a Friend” (this is just above the “Printer Friendly link”). If you think a topic is of particular interest to a friend click this link at the top (or bottom) of that topic’s page. You will then be asked for the name and email address of the friend, type this in and hit the ‘Send’ button and an email will automatically be sent to that friend inviting them to read the topic in question. Second up, if you want to directly contact another registered user of the discussion board by email there is now a new possibility to do so. It goes like this. Whenever you see the name of another user anywhere on the CLUAS discussion board you can click on it to be brought to the ‘Profile’ page of that user. On the user’s profile page, you will see a link ‘click to send an email’. Click on this link and you will now be prompted in a new pop-up window to type in the message you want to send to this user. His ‘Send’ and an email will be automatically sent to that user. A few points on privacy aspects to this new functionality: -> The user’s email address however is not revealed to you before or immediately after you hit the 'send' button. The CLUAS server will look after sending it to the right email address. -> If you do not want other people to be able to email you directly via this new function then you need to do the following steps: a) log in under your user id, b) go to your 'Profile' page (click the ‘profile’ link at the top of the page) c) then find the question “Allow Forum Members to Send you E-Mail?” on this page and change the answer from ‘Yes’ to ‘No’ in the drop-down box. d) Then hit the ‘Submit’ button to save this change to your profile. e) Other registered users of the board will now no longer be able to contact you directly by email. I hope yiz are happy with this new functionality. I think it strikes a good balance between extra convenience, ease of use, improved site security and all the while respecting privacy. If you’ve any comments on this feel free to post them here or email me directly (and that’s now a no-brainer - just follow the instructions above to email me!) Cheers. eoghan