These options are set from the E-mail tab of the Options Manager interface.

Discus presents several options to customize the behavior of e-mail notification messages according to your needs and desires. Some of these feature may not be available in freeware Discus.

• Add a link to edit profile within message: This option is recommended. If selected, e-mail notification messages will contain a link to edit a user's profile. The link will contain the username and encrypted password. Using this link, it will be possible for the user to log in to edit their profile even if they forgot their password. If you are concerned about security and the ability to edit a profile without knowing one's password, leave this option unselected.

• Disable ability to receive HTML mail: If checked, none of your users will be able to receive HTML formatted mail. All e-mail notification messages will then be sent in plain text. DiscusWare recommendes leaving this box unchecked and letting your users choose for themselves whether they prefer HTML or plain text notifications.

• E-mail notification only to moderators: If checked, e-mail notification messages will be available only for moderators. Generally, you will leave this box unchecked so that e-mail notification can be received by both moderators and your registered users.

• Preserve images and embedded items in HTML e-mail: If checked, Discus will preserve all <img src=...> formatting tags in e-mail notification messages. Conversely, if unchecked, Discus will strip out <img> and <embed> tags from e-mail notification messages. Most e-mail programs will not automatically display images linked from the internet within the mail message (for if they did, this would be an easy way for spammers to see who opened a message - and in fact this technique is widely used to exploit mail programs that do show the images. As a result, in most mail programs an empty box or broken image icon will be displayed, which may prompt your users to report this to you as a problem. In addition, due to the order in which Discus sends out e-mail notification in the case of images uploaded via the \image{} tag, the images may not work correctly anyway. DiscusWare recommends that you do not check this option.

• Send only headers (not message text): If checked, the actual text of an e-mail notification message will not be sent with the message. This is a way to let people know a new message was posted, but force them to go to the board to view the message. As users tend to enjoy the convenience of monitoring the discussion by e-mail, checking this box generally serves only to annoy users.

• Users may select e-mail notification by first-level subtopic: If checked, users will be able to select e-mail notification on a topic basis, but will also have the ability to check and uncheck first-level subtopics. This is a useful option on very well-organized boards with multiple levels of organization. On loosely organized systems, or with less sophistocated users, this option is not recommended.

• Subject Line: Select one of the following options to control the subject line for e-mail notification messages:

  • Name of page: The subject line will be the name of the page as it exists on the discussion board. This is a handy way for users to sort and categorize incoming messages and is recommended as the default.

  • Navigation bar (topic and page name): The subject line will be identical to the navigation bar found at the top of the page. While this is useful for sorting, the typical navigation bar exceeds the width limit of most e-mail programs, making full navigation bars difficult to read. DiscusWare generally recommends that this not be used, as a similar but better effect can be achieved using the name of the page.

  • Static text from language file: The subject line will always be the same. This makes e-mail participation difficult and is not recommended as a selection unless you have a good reason to use it.