I often wondered why people on the forum would ask me what my email address was... then I realised that nobody else could see it, due to a phpBB setting.

So I've now turned on the ability to display email addresses. You can hide yours from the User Control Panel at the top of the screen if you like.

Also, I've turned off the ability to PM me as I don't really need a separate inbox - if you need to contact me directly, please email me at alex@textadventures.co.uk - this email address should now appear to the left of my posts too!

You can control your own PM setting also from the User Control Panel.

Is there a way for me to send an e-mail from my yahoo account to the PM inbox of a user on these forums? I ask because I've been keeping a mailing list of the QuestComp entrants/judges in my yahoo account, but someone just joined up who does not have a public e-mail address listed in their user profile here. I'm going to ask them if I may have an e-mail address to use for that purpose, but in case they're not comfortable with that I wanted to pursue an alternative plan. I experimented with trying to e-mail myself, but didn't have any luck.

How did they sign up if you don't have an email address for them? I thought the only way someone could sign up to the comp was to email you.

Well, they sent a PM to my account here on the forums declaring their intent to enter. It hadn't even crossed my mind to tell them they needed to e-mail my yahoo account for "official" purposes. I just thought, "GREAT! MORE CONTESTANTS!" Do you think I should tell people they need to send me an actual e-mail for it to count? 'Cause this wouldn't be the first person who contacted me this way. It's just the first person who also does not have an e-mail displayed.

Yeah I think it should be clear in the rules what the official requirements are to enter - in this case, sending you an email should be the only way that counts.

I didn't realise it was possible for someone to PM but for the recipient not to be able to reply by PM... seems a bit of an omission in phpBB, unless yet again it's an option buried away somewhere. If you can't get through to the person let me know who it is and I'll find their email address.

Oh no, no. I CAN send him back PM's here on the forums, what I meant was: is it possible for an email account like yahoo to directly send a message that would be received by a PM service on a forum like this one. I sort of doubt it's possible, but I figured I'd ask, since it would be kinda handy.

PS: They have supplied me with an e-mail now, so I wouldn't need to do this. I still think it would be a neat trick though.

*facepalm*

Is that me? If so, I'll send you my Gmail, but if you really need it, my Yahoo. (I don't use it much).

Shouldn't this be set to off as default? I didn't realise it would be on until I saw this thread and email addresses can reveal all kinds of information that people might not want to share. Plus bots can probably harvest the info.

I don't think there's a setting in phpBB to make these off by default without completely hiding them for everybody.