Hello everyone,

I am working on the Private Message System or Notification System, and I wanted to ask you a couple questions.

When I first thought about it, I decided to create it so that users will get notifications when things happened on the site that involved them.
So, every time an image you have uploaded gets commented on, you will receive a PM, or every time a a new reply is added to one of the posts where you are involved you will get a PM.

The question is, do you like that feature, or would you rather use the PMs just to communicate between users??

I think that using the PM system for that is great, because right now we do not have any way to notify users of such events, and using PMs instead of emails is less annoying, since they only show up here, when you are visiting the site.

The other question would be if you think it would be OK to have a little floating box appear when you have NEW messages, near the top of the window?
I want to have some kind of message letting users know that they have new messages, and I thought that we could use one of two methods:

1. A little floating box that will appear on the right of the banner's box, saying that you have X new messages.
2. Use the very top line to add a little message saying you have new messages. On top of the "Home" , "Gallery", "Tags"... buttons.
We have enough space there, but users might miss it.

So, what do you think?

The system should be ready in the next couple weeks... in fact if you check http://www.theanimegallery.com/messages you will see how the development is going...
(You cannot send messages yet)

Thanks

PS: We have a forum post about this same issue, so you can post there if you want.