[robwoelich]

Originally Posted by jerx

Can you please tell us how we can help you guys? I think everyone is interested in this feature and also is willing to provide some help. The only problem is that we do not have any clue.

I thought that text messaging is a paid service. Does this cause any costs to the forum owner, the user who wants to sent a text message or the user who receives the text message?

The way this works is more or less explained in the description. Most cell phone companies have an email address for their subscribers where if you email it, it will turn the email into a text message and send it to their phone. For example, I have Alltel and their email for this is xxxxxxxxxx@message.alltel.com (xxx being your Alltel phone number). All that's happening here is that your forums are emailing the user at their cell phone company's email address like above, which in turn sends them a text message.

Most all cell phone companies provide this service for free, and the messages sent to your phone through the email address don't cost you anything or count toward your messages. And of course, it's free for your forums to send email. It usually makes it free for everybody, even people who don't have a text messaging plan. Some carriers are different, though... particularly smaller ones outside the U.S., and they may charge for those messages. That's a small chance, though.

How can you help? If you'd like to see a company added that isn't on the list yet, go to their website and do some research to see if they have an email address like the one example I gave above for their subscribers which will send a text message to their phone for free. Then, send me the company name, country of service, an example phone number (so I can program the script for the number's length) and the email address and I'll get it added.