[whodah]

perfect! ty both!

the one to modify the PM notification turned out to be: pmreceived

(i modified 'notify' as well)

cool, got it all worked out how we wanted.

if this is of interest to anyone, i modified pmreceived to make the PM email notification show the PM message (similar to what a subscribed thread does by default) as such (the major difference is the addition of pm[message]):

$touserinfo[username],

You have received a new private message at $vboptions[bbtitle]

From: $bbuserinfo[username]
Subject: $pm[title]
PM Inbox location: $vboptions[bburl]/private.php
Message:
***************
$pm[message]
***************

Thanks,
$vboptions[bbtitle] team