I'm feeling dumber than ever
 

I got a message from a member today. It wasn't a Private Message, but there was an indicator of an unread message in the "Notifications" tab at the top of the page. I clicked on the tab and it took me to a page in my profile that I never knew existed. I read the message and went to another page. Now I can't find the page where the message was/is. Does anyone know what this is and how to remove the option to have messages sent there.

The last thing I need is yet another format in which contacts are made. I currently am getting product requests in six different formats. To say the least, it can be quite confusing. I've been working on having someone remove this number of options for almost a year and, well you know how web developers are...I probably don't need to elaborate.

It sounds like you're talking about visitor messages. There should be a tab named "Visitor Messages" in your profile (it's selected by default on my test site). I don't know if there's any option to make it completely go away, but you can edit your user groups and remove the premission to post there.

Yep, that was exactly what it was and the exact remedy too. Thank you very much for your help.

I guess I should start visiting my own profile more often.

Turns out there is a way to turn off visitor messaging completely: go to Settings > Options > User Profile Options > Enabled User Profile Features, and there's a check box to disable it.