Messaging between members

Members can reach a seller in two ways, and you choose which one your site uses:

• By email (the default). The Send Message button on a listing opens a contact form. Your site emails the message to the seller, and the seller replies from their own mailbox, straight to the buyer’s email address.
• Through messaging. The same button starts a private conversation on your site. Both members read and answer it in their Messages inbox, and neither sees the other’s email address. Your site emails them a short notification for each new message, with a link back to the conversation.

Messaging keeps the conversation on your marketplace, protects members’ email addresses and lets you add price offers. The email form works for visitors who don’t have an account.

Switch messaging on

1. In the admin panel, go to Add-ons and open Messaging.
2. Switch on Enable messaging.
3. Choose the options below.
4. Click Save changes in the bar at the bottom.

Setting	What it does
Enable messaging	Turns the inbox on. Buyers must sign in to contact a seller.
Custom orders	Sellers can send a buyer an order at an agreed price from the conversation (see Custom orders).
Read receipts	Shows Seen under the last message a member sent, once the other person has opened the conversation (see Read receipts). On for new sites, off on older ones until you switch it on.
Attachments	Members can attach up to 5 photos or PDFs to a message (see Photos and PDFs). On for new sites, off on older ones until you switch it on.
Request a quote	Buyers can ask a seller for a price, and pay the quote online. See Request a quote.

Read receipts, attachments, the inbox’s sort and its Needs your action box work in the Nova and default themes. Mercury and other themes with their own inbox pages don’t show them yet.

Buyers can also offer their own price inside a conversation: see Make an offer.

What changes when messaging is on

	Email contact form	Messaging
Who can contact a seller	Anyone, unless you switch on Require Login to Contact in Listings › Settings	Signed-in members only. Visitors who click Send Message are asked to sign in first.
Where replies happen	In each member’s own mailbox	In Messages, inside each member’s account
Email addresses	The seller sees the buyer’s email address	Stay private on both sides
Attachments	Buyers can attach a file if Upload file is on in Listings › Settings	Up to 5 photos or PDFs per reply in the conversation, if Attachments is on (the Upload file option is hidden)
Price offers	No	Buyers can add a price to their message if Price on Contact Form is on in Listings › Settings
Contact from a member’s profile	Sent by email	Starts a direct conversation

Members can’t contact a seller

If buyers say there’s no way to reach a seller, or sellers never hear from buyers, check these in order:

What you notice	Check
No Send Message button on any listing	Switch on Contact Form in Listings › Settings › Listing details and click Save changes. See Listing page and form fields.
No button on one listing	The button only shows on published listings. A listing that is waiting for approval, unpaid or expired has none.
Visitors click the button and are asked to sign in	That’s expected with messaging on, or with Require Login to Contact switched on. Visitors need an account to send a message.
Buyers send messages, sellers never get them	With the email form, the message goes to the seller’s email address: see Emails aren’t arriving. With messaging, it’s in the seller’s Messages inbox, with a notification email.
You’d rather members talk by phone or WhatsApp	Switch on the Phone field, or the WhatsApp, Skype and Telegram buttons (below).

After changing a setting, open a listing in a private window to see what visitors see.

How members use their inbox

Members open Messages from their account menu. The inbox has four views, and a Sort menu to show conversations by Latest message (the default), Unread first or Oldest first:

View	What it holds
All	Every active conversation.
Unread	Conversations with messages they haven’t read yet.
Archive	Conversations they have archived.
Spam	Conversations they marked as spam.

Inside a conversation, the member writes in the box at the bottom and clicks Reply. The Actions menu has:

• Archive — moves the conversation to Archive.
• Spam — moves it to Spam.
• Delete — removes it from the member’s inbox.
• Report — sends the conversation to you, the site admin, with an optional reason, and emails you about it (see Reported conversations).

Archive, Spam and Delete only affect the member’s own inbox, not the other person’s.

When a buyer contacts the seller about the same listing again, the message joins their existing conversation instead of starting a new one. If the seller has archived or deleted that conversation, a new one starts. If the seller marked it as spam or deleted it, new messages from that buyer arrive in it silently, without an email.

Needs your action

At the top of the inbox, a Needs your action box lists what is waiting on the member, apart from unread messages, newest first (up to 20). Each line links to the place where they act on it:

• an offer to answer;
• a quote to send, answer or pay;
• a return to answer or refund (sellers), or to send back (buyers);
• a booking request to accept or decline (sellers);
• a sale to ship, when you hold payments until delivery.

Each kind only shows while its feature is on. In the Nova theme, the number on the messages icon at the top of every page counts unread messages plus these things to do.

Photos and PDFs in messages

With Attachments on, members can pick files under the reply box in a conversation (Attach files). They can add up to 5 files to a reply: photos (JPG or PNG) or PDFs, up to 10 MB each. Photos show in the conversation as thumbnails that open full size, and PDFs as a download link with the file name.

Files are checked when they’re uploaded. A file that is too big, or isn’t really a photo or a PDF, is left out: the reply is sent without it and the member sees why. A reply always needs some text as well. Files can only be added to replies inside a conversation, not to the first message sent from a listing.

Anyone who has a file’s link can open it, as with listing photos. Tell members not to send passports, ID cards or other private documents through messages.

Read receipts

With Read receipts on, a member sees Seen and how long ago under the last message they sent, once the other person has opened the conversation. It’s a site-wide setting: members can’t switch it off for themselves.

Notification emails

Each new message sends one of these email templates, which you can reword:

Template key	Sent when
messaging-ad-contact	A buyer starts a conversation about a listing.
messaging-user-contact	Someone sends a direct message from a member’s profile.
messaging-reply	Someone replies in an existing conversation.

The email contains the message and a Read and reply button that signs the member in and opens the conversation.

Custom orders: agree a price, then pay

With Custom orders on, the seller of a listing sees Create custom order in the conversation. They enter a description and an amount, and the buyer receives it as a message with a Pay order link. The buyer pays through your site’s payment gateway at the agreed price.

This suits negotiated sales: a buyer offers less, the seller accepts, and the custom order turns the agreement into a payment. You need payments set up first: see Take payments on your marketplace and Let members sell with Buy Now. Custom orders work in the Nova and default themes and some older themes; Mercury and other themes based on Atlantic don’t offer Create custom order.

Spam protection

Messages to sellers go through the same checks as your other forms: captcha, Akismet and, when it is on, the blacklist, which stops members marked as spammers from sending anything. The contact form on a member’s profile always shows a captcha to visitors who aren’t signed in, even if you switched Captcha off, because bots use it to send spam to sellers. On top of that, one visitor can contact at most 20 listings every ten minutes, and sending the same message about the same listing twice within ten minutes only delivers it once.

WhatsApp, Skype and Telegram buttons

You can also show buttons that open a chat with the seller in WhatsApp, Skype or Telegram. They work with or without messaging. Each is a user custom field with a reserved name:

1. Go to Settings › User Custom Fields and click New field.
2. Enter the Name whatsapp, skype or telegram (exactly that, in lower case) and a label members will understand, such as WhatsApp number.
3. Switch on Show on sign-up if new members should fill it in when they register, and save.

Members enter their WhatsApp number (with country code), Skype name or Telegram username in their profile. In the Nova theme, the seller box on their listings then shows a WhatsApp, Skype or Telegram button (other themes may show only some of them). These chats happen outside your site, so you can’t see or moderate them.

For public discussion rather than private messages, use the forum.

Related guides

• Listing page and form fields — the contact form and price options.
• Email templates — reword the message notifications.
• Let members sell with Buy Now — payments between buyers and sellers, and custom orders.
• Make an offer — buyers offer their own price in the conversation.
• Fight spam — every tool against spam.
• Admin support tools — handle conversations members report.
• Questions and answers on listings — public questions on the listing page, answered once for every buyer.