Private Messages Enhancements - Restrict Private Messages to Public if not Enough Posts

This is a very small mod which will prevent users from sending private messages to anyone except the designated staff group (like admin) if they are below a certain threshold of post count.

Recently I've had two spam attacks in quick succession made via PM to dozens of my users in my community from spammers who verified their email address and didn't bother posting. Those are very annoying to find and clean up via the database, so better to stop it at the source.

There are two settings in the Private Messaging options section, one is the minimum post count needed to have free use of the private message system, and second is the sole usergroup they can contact via private message if they do not meet that minimum. For example, someone might not be able to post due to some technical issue, but still needs to tell the staff about it somehow! Besides, my particular spammers made sure they did not target any staff members...

I made this in about ten minutes to solve my own spam issue, so I will most likely not expand on it, but I will help with whatever minuscule support might be required.

edit: thank you similar threads for finding pretty much the same mod from a couple vb versions ago! I tried searching before I began but didnt find anything in the first few pages. Oh well, mine's slightly more straight-forward internally

[masterme]

Nice mod, but would like to be able to set more than one designated staffgroups.

[el-q6ri]

It will be better if it possible to make more than one user group to recive PM.

[NickyDee]

Any chance you could give me a vague run-down of how this works? I'm going to make something along these lines for my vB4.1 forum.

[Ro7 Qatif]

Hey, is it possible to not include one group from this setting?
e.g. I set the option to disallow sending PMs unless member has 1000 posts minimum, is it possible to let members from group 11 for example to send PMs even if they have less than 1000 posts?

[Black Tiger]

No that is not possible. Would be a nice feature tho.

[Darkwaltz4]

Originally Posted by NickyDee

Any chance you could give me a vague run-down of how this works? I'm going to make something along these lines for my vB4.1 forum.

When attempting to send a PM, if the user is under the post count threshold and they are including recipients outside of the specified usergroup, they are given an error.

I guess if I were to do an update (doubtful) I would have two usergroup settings vs two global settings - "Can be contacted when below post count threshold" and "Post count threshold to restrict PM recipients" - in case anyone would like to try making such an addon

[Scyther]

marked installed...very good mod

[Super-six]

This is a nice mod. Someone should bring it into v 4.x.x

[rpgamersnet]

Installed flawlessly on my forum, 3.8.x. Great mod, thank you.

[Paul Stenning]

Excellent thank you. Small straightforward mod which works perfectly on v3.8.11, and should stop the spam and scam PMs being sent to members by new zero-post members.