Hi, all! To this day, I've always notified every honoree of every Practice Bakes Perfect challenge, Saturday Spotlight, site artist designation, and any other special Cookie Connection awards program, regardless of whether that person has private messaging enabled on this site. As a result, I often spend hours notifying people individually through email when notifications could happen much more efficiently via a group private message on this site.
Effective immediately, I will only be issuing special recognition alerts via the private messaging feature on this site. This decision was made purely out of necessity, as I believe my limited time would be better spent doing development work (writing content, designing new features, finding new contributors, etc.) than doing admin tasks for the site. Not to mention, the private messaging function on this site is very powerful and a great way to forge deeper connections with members, so everyone should know how to use it for that reason alone.
This all being said, if you want to be sure you get notified if you're recognized in a challenge, a Spotlight, as a site artist, or for some other reason, then please enable the private messaging function on your member profile. It must be enabled to allow me to send you private messages. Please note that you will not get "I was featured" badges or the code that goes with them unless I can send these items via private message. To enable private messaging, simply go to your avatar in the upper right of the site (which you'll see when logged in), click on "Your Settings" in the dropdown menu, and then make sure the box labeled "Prevent New Private Messages From Being Sent To You" is UN-checked in the "Privacy Settings" area, as it is in the screenshot of this area in my profile, below.
Thank you for understanding. If you have any questions, please put them in the comments below so all can benefit from the answers.
