LetterMo Orientation 2024

The start of LetterMo 2024 is just around the corner! As we all get ready gathering together our stationery, filling our pens, and purchasing our stamps, your admin team wanted to provide this quick guide to finding your way around the LetterMo website. While some of the features on the website are open to the public, many of the more interactive features require you to be logged in. A new menu item will appear on the website after you have logged in with links to these member-only sections.

Countdown to the start of LetterMo for those celebrating at the International Dateline

There are several discussion boards with various threads. This is where you can engage with fellow participants, through introductions and other topics. You will find a forum dedicated to the 2024 challenge with threads for introductions, virtual write-in gatherings, and mail-calls where you can share the letters you sent each day. A General forum is available for conversation about the website itself or other topics that are directly related to the annual challenge. Members have the ability to create new topics and reply to existing topics in each of the forums. If you think we need an additional forum for a conversation, let us know and we can create one.

This section houses pages with information about the history of LetterMo, some frequently asked questions, as well as downloadable resources to help you with your letter writing. Looking for a printable planning calendar or badges that you can use on your website or social media? This is the place to look.

This is the place to watch for fun and interesting posts from the LetterMo community, including the one you are reading right now! We have a lot of blog posts lined up and scheduled for the month of February (and beyond) including articles from our admin team, featured posts from community members, as well as user submitted posts through our collaborative posts or mailed-in submissions. Point your RSS feader to our site to stay up-to-date, or follow us on your preferred social media platform (including Mastodon). If you post about LetterMo, be sure to use #LetterMo so that everyone can follow along with you!

The members page (limited to signed-in users) lists all registered users on LetterMo–currently 900 strong! The member list defaults to an alphabetical ordering, but you can also choose to sort by recently active members. You can use the search box to look for a particular person or to search their profile fields–for example, searching for members in a certain country. Pro-tip: if you are perusing the member list, open profiles in a new tab so that you don’t lose your place in the list.

Once you are logged in, you can access your profile from the Members menu. Your profile contains your bio and other details about yourself, including your mailing address. If you have participated in the past, it is a good idea to log in and make sure that your details and bio are up-to-date before the start of February. Different fields in your profile have different default visibility levels, which you can change. Your mailing address defaults to only being visible to your friends, while your bio is visible to all members so that they can learn more about you before requesting a friendship connection. Please be sure to check whether you have indicated your interest in new pen pal connections each year!

The friends section of your profile maintains all the friendship connections you have approved on LetterMo and is a convenient place to view your pen pal’s profile pages in case you need to double check their mailing address. You will also find friendship requests on this section, and can review who has requested the connection before you approve it.

The notifications section collects all the notifications your account has received–from friendship requests to responses to your forum posts. You can delete these after you have reviewed them.

The settings section allows you to reset your password, change profile visibility, choose the level of email notifications you receive, and export your personal data. If you wish to delete your account for any reason, please contact the admins using the contact form, providing your username and email address, and we will initiate an account deletion for you (note, you will receive an email from the system to confirm deletion).

We hope that this is a helpful guide to the LetterMo site and wish you a successful February! If you run into issues, you can always reach out to the admins by using the contact us page, posting on the forums, or emailing us directly at lettermo.contact@gmail.com–our admin team monitors emails daily.