In a few minutes I'll be p-mailing the confirmed players (and checking on Windi again) as a test to make sure they understand how the pmail system works.
But then it occurred to me that, on the assumption that some of the new members might not know how, they also might not even realize when p-mail messages come in!
And this post could be handy for other players who, after watching us for a while, want to join up later. So:
To make sure you've got your p-mail set up at all, go to the upper-left-most row of hyperlinks and mouse (don't click yet) over "Profile". The engine should produce a drop-menu like you see here:
Mouse down to "Account Settings" and single-click that. (All the clicks are single, not double.)
The engine will open a new page with your profile settings, which will probably show your passwords and other basic information. Mouse over "Modify Profile" as in the pic shown here:
On this drop-down menu, click on "Personal Messaging" (highlighted in the pic).
The engine should change your view to something very similar to this:
These are your options for the p-mail system. You need to make sure all members except those on your block list can p-mail to you (since we don't have a group for this game. You can always change back to something more restricted after we're done.) I also strongly recommend clicking the box that tells the system to email you p-mail alerts. (The system will send them to the address you registered your membership with.)
Personally I don't like the pop-up alert system which triggers if you've received a new p-mail since the last time you loaded a page on the site; and your web browser may not like them either. But if you prefer that method of alert on-site, that's okay, whatever works best for you.
Regardless of what else you click, the system will check back at your p-mail each time you load a page anywhere on the Grogheads forum, and will give you a bolded alert up here:
I don't happen to have one when taking that snapshot, but "My Messages" will be
bolded and will show a number for the total of new messages. If you mouse over that hyperlink, a drop-down menu will show as in the pic, and you'll click "Read your messages".
This will take you to your pmail inbox, which will be sorted old-top or new-top according to whatever you chose (or forgot to change
) back in your p-mail preferences. Iirc, new entries will be bolded, and you can click on them to open them up to read, typical functionality. To which you can then reply as usual for forum messages.
If you want to send a p-mail to a game player (or any other Groghead member for that matter, assuming they're allowing this function), one easy way is to look under their avatar on any post they've made, and find if there's a speech-bubble icon like this:
I've added a red arrow outline to point to it, since my screenshot function doesn't show my mouse pointer. (Not every member will have all the other icons, btw.) (And if a member shows the old icq icon, there's a good chance this is a Russian spambot or something like that.
)
Clicking on that will take you to your p-mail box (the outbox I think), and load up a composition window with the member's name already added to the receiving list, like this:
You can also type a member's forum name in the receiver blank up there, and the engine will cycle through members with a close match until it narrows down to the one you want or you see it listed. This will be part of its own little drop-down menu, and you can click on that to add the member to your send-list.
The p-mail system is pretty secure: I'm not sure (having admin'd this engine before elsewhere) whether it's possible for even the adminstrators to check other people's p-mail!
Anyway, this is how I'll be sending players information on the (few) cards you'll be holding, which is the only secret information in the game -- aside from any private discussions players want to have with each other, of course! And I may use it occasionally as a handy umpire message tool, which is what I'm about to do by sending everyone a p-mail mostly equivalent to this post.
I hope that explanation (and the snapshots) made sense! If not, you can post questions below. Also, if you get a p-mail from me this way, be sure to reply back so that I know the links are up and running. (It isn't strictly
necessary to reply back, I just want to be sure everyone understands at least how to see new messages from me and ask questions privately at least, about cards you're holding for example.)
