OK, maybe I don't understand how the system is _supposed_ to work, then. On the site I run, the host guild has 7 usergroups with varying permissions to various forums. There are three guilds in the alliance, each of which has three levels of permissions on their own. So off the bat, there's 16 usergroups plus regular forum members. Now, in order to accomodate user titles for all these groups, I need to make another version of each group with identical permissions except with custom usertitles? No? What am I missing, here?
Forgive me for asking dense questions, but I inherited this job and do not have a lot of experience as a forum admin.
No, make a usergroup that matches the initial usergroups permissions except with the ability to have PM's. You can clone the registered usergroups permissions setup as well, so you wont need to redo permissions everywhere.
Now setup the promotion for additional usergroups.