This message is primarily intended for the eyes of the moderators.

I joined this forum yesterday, and I currently have two unread PMs in my inbox. However, I won't be able to check them for another six days, due to being a new member. Could you perhaps add an option so that if a new member reaches a certain post count, then they will be able to use the PM system before the seven days? I'm sorry if this request is ridiculous or if it is asking for too much, but I don't know anything about the history of CathInfo (and possibly its trouble with spammers), nor do I know anything about coding a forum. I thought I'd ask anyway though:smoke-pot:

It's so cruel seeing those red words...Messenger (2 new)...flooding my thoughts...haunting my dreams...

Try now.

Wow, how did you do that? I can check my messages now! Thank you. :alcohol:

Hail the all powerful moderator!   :king:

I'll PM you the details.

(Just kidding)

I have to put a restriction on, since we've had spammers in the past sign up for an account, and immediately start sending PMs to all the membership.

But If I put a hold on new accounts for X days, spammers usually forget about CathInfo before their waiting period is up.

I can't find a lot of the older PMs I've received. The list doesn't go back more than one page. Where are the rest?

I can't find a lot of the older PMs I've received. The list doesn't go back more than one page. Where are the rest?

Sad to say, they're gone.

I had a problem a couple months ago with CathInfo taking too much CPU processing power. My webhost shut me down for a while! We can't have that.

So I had to find ways to lessen the load on the Database Server where everything lives. I didn't want to delete ANY posts, but I noted that the PM system creates a page with ALL PMs you have ever received. I couldn't believe how many hundreds of PMs I had collected over the years! So that's got to be taking a bit of CPU power to produce.

So I removed all PMs older than 2 months old.

If you have mementos or PMs that are dear to your heart -- maybe important news, an intriguing discussion, some awesome links somebody sent you, the PM you sent to your then-girlfriend proposing marriage, etc. -- you might want to save them off to a text file.

I can't archive them here, due to the nature of how the system handles PMs.

My thinking is that PMs are a lot like e-mails -- irrelevant a week or two later. Just like some e-mails need to be saved off to a permanent file, the same goes for PMs.