Comment Reply Notifier

In the not-so-long ago, whenever someone would comment on my blog and I would reply, I would also manually copy that reply into an email and send it to the person who commented. Many of you who commented here in the long ago probably received a few of these from me.

I did that mostly because it creates dialog between myself and the commenter.

That, and one of my biggest pet peeves about leaving comments on a blog: I don’t always know if someone replied to it, short of going back and checking the post all the time (I’m busy lazy), or subscribing to email notifications of all future comments to a post (annoying if you get hundreds of comments), or subscribing to the comment rss feed.

Sometimes none of these options are something I necessarily want to do all the time.

Then the great J.P., through some sort of cosmic awesomeness, pointed me to a WordPress plugin that did a similar function to what I was doing automagically. Which in turn led to finding yet another plugin that did the same thing, but with a few customizable features.

However, neither of these plugins did things exactly as I needed them to do. And neither of them were customizable (sort of editing the source code), which I wanted.

Which led me to this decision, why not build on that code and create a better version of the plugin?

So that is what I did.

And those of you who have commented in the last few months have probably received emails showing that I (or someone) replied to your comment.

Which is the dialog I’ve wanted!

Now that I’ve done that, I’d like to ask a favor of my blogger buddies. Who use WordPress. I’d ask that some of you run this plugin on your blog, if you are so inclined.

I’ve packaged the plugin, which you can download from here. (Right-click on the link on a PC or Control and click for Mac, and choose “Save Link/Target As…” Choose a destination and click “Save.”)

Once you’ve saved the .zip file, open your blogs WordPress Dashboard and go to Plugins > Add New.

At the top of that page, you’ll see a sentence that ends with “or upload a plugin in .zip format via this page.” Click that link.

You will be taken to a new page. Press the [Browse] button and navigate to where you saved the .zip file you downloaded from here and select it.

After that, click the [Install Now] button.

Click the “Activate Plugin” link.

Under your Settings, you will now see a “Comment Reply Notifier” options page.

Most of the settings should auto-fill with the correct information as provided by the back-end of your blog. However you can change it as you wish.

I also recommend selecting the option “Commenter’s choice to receive e-mail notification (default checked)”.

And that’s it. All NEW replied to comments made from this point forward will send an email to the original commenter.

(Please note, this doesn’t modify previous comments retroactively. It just works going forward on comments posted after you install and activate the plugin. I’m working on adding a retroactive option.)

You will also now see a new entry under the comment field that looks like this:

I do not know if this works with WordPress hosted blogs. I’m looking into that. Update: Plugins aren’t allowed on WordPress.com hosted blogs, just WordPress blogs that are self-hosted:

Plugins are tools used to extend the functionality of the WordPress platform. However, they are only applicable to self-hosted blogs and web sites using the WordPress.org software. Plugins are not permitted here at WordPress.com for various security reasons.

If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog, I do not know if this works if you have Jetpack Comments turned on. I’m looking into that now.

If you download it, please let me know what you think. I’ll also assist you with any troubleshooting/issues you might have with it.

Until next time...
Erik

16 thoughts on “Comment Reply Notifier

  1. I would be interested to see what you find out for the wordpress hosted blogs. I was looking to add this and am unable to figure out how since I don’t have a Plugins section in my dashboard that I can find anyway.

    Great work on this!

    1. It looks like WP blogs hosted by WP.com don’t allow plugins at all:

      Plugins are tools used to extend the functionality of the WordPress platform. However, they are only applicable to self-hosted blogs and web sites using the WordPress.org software. Plugins are not permitted here at WordPress.com for various security reasons.

      I guess that answers that question for us.

  2. I’ve read through all of that twice and I haven’t the foggiest idea what the fuck any of it means. My blog is on Blogger — I go to other blogs and leave a comment, then later in the day I go back to see if anyone has replied to or built on my comment. It seems to work.

    1. It’s that entire going back again bit that I’m trying to cut down on myself. Plus I don’t often remember the blogs I might have left a comment on.

      1. Ah, but all the blogs I read are by brilliant writers and fascinating people, so I always remember to go back! 🙂

  3. Sorry I’m so late. I just installed and activated it. No problems. I’m not posting much these last few weeks, and next few weeks due to my impending move to Virginia, but eventually I’ll let you know how the plugin works out.

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