There are a couple of tricks to using this:
One has to have the DhO "screen name" of someone to send a message to them, which was explained once here by Simon Ekstrand -- one of the techies who helps manage the site: [I think one needs to be
'logged-in' to DhO]
"
...what you do is find a post by the person you want to message, then click their name/icon so you get to their personal profile page.
There, check the url for that page, in tom toms case its: http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/t-om/home. See the t-om there? That's his screen name in liferay. Use that in the recipients box when sending private messages and you should get an exact match for tom tom"
That is to say, in the Message function 'compose', even though it prompts with "
Enter email address and press <Enter>", there you type or copy the "
screen name" (why it's called there "email address"?) into the recipients box, and a menu should appear, including the name of the person you're looking for. Click that name and then can enter title and message and send.
It does work,
most of the time.Once I tried looking-up someone from their name/icon as poster, and the screen name looked to be "x", which got nowhere in the message system. It might have been blocked.
Another time, as a test, clicking the name/icon of one "Daniel M. Ingram" a screen came-up unlike what appears for most posters:
"Invitation
Invite FriendsYou do not have the roles required to access this portlet.Anticipating the Launch of DhO 2.0 Published Date 8/16/09 7:53 PM
I am so excited about DhO 2.0 launching, and as we do the work to get
it up and running and looking good, I am so grateful for everyone who
has been helping with it. I want this place to continue to shine, and I
think the addition of the communities, the wiki, a much more
well-organized discussion section, and the vast capabilities of the
LifeRay platform will transform the DhO into a...
Read More About Anticipating the Launch of DhO 2.0 »"
In the URL, though, was "...web/
danielmingram/home", and "
danielmingram" seems to work as a screen name for messages.
So the DhO liferay implementation, like many other moderately sophisticated s/w systems, s/t takes a bit of geek talent, ability to tolerate cognitive dissonance, to get it to work.
(Maybe the messaging thing is in the meantime documented somewhere on the website that I haven't noticed.)
