Personal Messaging Overview

In addition to Raft and Channel Chat, you can also send individual and group messages to any member of your community. You can find your direct messages by selecting the DMs (💬) icon on the left sidebar on web or the bottom navigation bar on the iOS and Android apps.  

To learn more about the different types of messaging, visit our Support Center Messaging section.

Create a New Message

To create a new message on the web platform, select the +Create button at the top right of the screen and select Message. Choose one or more recipients, then select Message.

Then, type out your message and click Send. And yes, you can send images, GIFs, videos, and files directly!

Create a Group Message

If you choose more than one person, you can send a DM to multiple people at once by creating a personal messaging group. As the creator of the personal messaging group, you can give it a name and image to easily find it. You can also create a private Event by creating the Event within the group. 

Message Invites

When you send someone a message for the first time, they will receive a message invite. This allows members to easily dismiss spam or unwanted messages while still being able to receive messages from anyone in their communities. 

When you receive a message invite, you will be able to read the message, and will be prompted to accept or reject the message.  

Selecting Allow will add the sender to your list of DMs and allow you to chat with them.

Selecting Decline will hide the sender from your list of DMs. The sender will not be notified that you rejected their message. However, they will still be able to send you additional messages. Each new message will prompt a new message invite. If you do not want to receive any more messages from that sender, you will need to block them. (We will never notify a member that you have blocked them.)

You can bypass message invites by following people you want to be able to receive messages from. You can follow people by visiting their user profile, or from most member lists. You will always receive messages from people you follow.

Broadcast Messages

Some Community Admins also have permission to Broadcast a message, which allows you to send the same message individually to multiple community members (not as a group message).

Multi-Community Messages

Personal messaging is not community-dependent, which means you can see all of your messages from any community in the same inbox. You can also create a personal messaging group with people from multiple communities.