After quite a long time, I have managed to put together some hours of free time to come up with a new release of User Messages. The highlights are obviously the email possibilities offered by this new version: mass email, email to roles, etc. Another important and very much requested feature was the ability to easily select users even if there were 500+ users. Here is a copy of the change log for this version:

• [+] Verified compatibility with WP 3.0 RC1
• [+] Improved the way to select users (auto-complete)
• [+] Added possibility to send mass emails to your users
• [+] Added missing dashboard icons to default theme
• [+] Improved the folder views
• [+] Users can view their pending emails
• [+] Changed frontend page parameters (prefixed by um_) to avoid conflict with the new WordPress theme
• [+] Opening the plugin to developers to allow them to use the messenging functions
• [*] Fixed bug related to shortcode replacement
• [*] Fixed capability bug on sending role messages
• [*] Moved the about section to a separate page in the settings page

I have also started to place hooks and filters in the plugin so that other developers can use the features of User Messages. Let me know if you need some additional hook.

There was a bug in the permalinks for WPML. It has been corrected in version 2.4.2. You simply need to deactivate the plugin, overwrite the plugin files and re-activate it.

I have implemented some requested features on the forum (I left some of them which required quite big changes). User Messages 2.4.0 has the following new features:

• The plugin is now compatible with the multi-language plugin WPML. This allows you to have the user interface page in various languages, ...
• There is a new option to set the sender of the notifications (before they were coming from WordPress)
• There is now an option to choose - when a user registers - if the default is "receive notifications by email" or "don't receive notifications by email".

Additionally, the plugin has been tested on WordPress 2.9.1. I hope you will like this new release.

We have here a release that not only fixes one important limitation (the User Messages page does not have to be a top level page anymore) but it also offers 3 new features that you requested:

• I added 4 template functions to include links in the theme (see administrator manual)
• You can now send messages to roles, that is groups of users
• When a message has been sent successfully the form is now disabled so that the message cannot be sent twice by mistake (same for emails)
• You can now limit the number of recipients for private messages (limit spamming)

I hope you will like this new release.

The URLs generated when not using permalinks were not correct for message reading. People who are using permalinks were not affected by this bug.

User Messages 2.2.1 has been released today. I have fixed various bugs concerning the URLs generated by the plugin. This should please the users not using permalinks, and the users getting 404 errors after they edit a page.

A new version of User Messages is available. It contains a feature that had been requested (ability to choose how user names are displayed) and a big improvement on the user interface (you can click on the user names to access a small panel with his profile and links to send him messages. Additionally some bugs concerning message notifications have been corrected.

If you are a registered user and you have not received the update, please contact me by email to request the file. If you don't have the plugin, go straight to the order page.

Small user profile with links to message him

Version 2.1.1 of the User Messages plugin is available. The compatibility with WordPress 2.8.5 has been checked rougthly but mainly a critical bug has been corrected for subscribers not being able to send private messages.

Version 2.1.0 of the User Messages plugin is available. There are a few new features (sorting of users made case-insensitive, news feed of the plugin included in its settings page) and two bugs have been fixed (permalinks when page url did not end with a "/", users appearing to reject private messages even if caps and preferences were not configured for this).

Finally, version 2.0.0 of the User Messages plugin is available. There have been such big changes in the plugin and also in my personal situation that I have decided to make this plugin commercial. You can get to the plugin page and order a license (single website or multiple website) using PayPal.

The major change is the one which has been requested many times: the User Interface is now part of your website interface just like any other static page. But that is not the only improvement: you can now also save a copy of the sent messages into a separate folder, the administration panel has been improved, you do not depend anymore on the Role Manager plugin to set the capabilities, etc.

I hope that, despite the fact it is now commercial, a lot of people will find it useful. As usual, you can direct your feature requests and the bug reports to the appropriate forum.