Internal messaging

SPIP offers an internal messaging system (a section of the present documentation is dedicated to messages between users, to memos and to the calendar).

You can decide to use all or parts of this system.

-   Enabling/disabling internal messaging

A reason for not using internal messaging could be the space that these messages consume in the database: these messages (such as the messages of the forums linked to your articles, for instance) are stored in the database and therefore take up disk space on your web host account. Moreover, the internal messaging features add an additional burden on the machine which is hosting your site (database queries): if your machine is of a small configuration (and/or very slow), you might prefer to lighten its workload by disabling the messaging.

-  Enabling/disabling the list of connected editors

If you enable this feature, the list of users connected to your site’s private area will be permanently displayed in the private zone. This will notably encourage more communication using instant messages between your users.

This feature does involve additional queries being made to the database; you might better disable this feature on a slow machine. It is also worth noting that some users may find this feature intrusive.

You should note that: When you enable the above features for the whole site, it is still possible, for each individual user, to disable these features for their own usage. This way, if a user finds the internal messaging functions unnecessary or intrusive, he can simply disable this feature for his own use.