As I think has been mentioned once already, we're planning to take lots of small steps and a couple of giant leaps during MISS month.

This morning we've added a 'welcome message' feature. New members will now receive an email a minute or two after joining your conversation. The text of the email, as well as the address it is sent from, is entirely configurable by you (the site's administrator).

You'll find the editable text for this email in the prefs, at a URL that look something like this:

http://www.free-conversant.com/yourSite/admin
  /conversations
    /yourSite
      /preferences$plugin=mainRespodner%20Interface

There are four macros that can be used in the text of this email:

• <!--#memberName--> is replaced with the member's full name
• <!--#memberEmail--> is replaced with the member's email address
• <!--#memberPassword--> is replaced with the member's password
• <!--#siteUrl--> is replaced with the URL of the conversation that the new member has just joined

Every conversation already has a usable welcome message at the preference mentioned above. Feel free to customize it as much as you want (perhaps you'd like to mention the mailing-list abilities of your site, or instructions for accessing the newsgroup). Also, if you want the message sent from your own address, change the mail-from and SMTP server preferences (they're right there with the text of the message).

Let us know what you think, please!

Seth