Private Messages useless?

They way they are now - hidden at the bottom of the forums list, private message seem all but useless. There needs to be some sort of in your face notification at the top of the page (or at least an email) when someone receives a private message. Does this forum software not have such a feature? As things are now, people seldom realize they have a private message in a timely fashion.

If you don't hide the "right column" there is a notification there as well.

Thanks for the info, but the right hand columns is largely useless to me (and consumes a lot of screen space), so I keep it hidden. It seems I'm not alone, as private messages I send seldom get read in a timely fashion, even when I know the user is very active in the forums.

Well, I certainly don't want to argue with anyone. But do others find that members don't notice and read their PM's in a timely fashion? I've PM'd very active forum members on several occasions, and it's usually days (or longer) before they notice they have a PM and read it.

My point is simply that the mechanism by which members are notified that they have PM's could stand improvement. Email notification, if the forum software has such an option, would be great.

I was like you and hid the right column for the longest time. However, when I realised how good it was for tracking updated threads I left it visible. I agree that there should be a secondary notification though, one that is more visible than the one at the bottom. There used to be an annoying red indicator near the top left when PMs were received.

If you want to get an idea... Join the German site and check out their forum. They were the guinea pigs on the update. From the little testing I've seen with the French site, the tracking is better but still utilizes the right hand column from what I've seen.

When I send someone a message, I always look at the right coloumn to see if he's replied. But I find that most of the PMs that I send to some users, either forgets to read them, or just doesn't see it, or they rarely even go into the PM box.