Comment Email Responder

Description

The Comment Email Responder v2 is based on the work of Andrew Flusche who can up with the original concept and wrote the first iteration of this plugin. It’s purpose is to provide an easy mechanism for a blog administrator to email a response to one of the comments placed on the website. The response becomes a comment in the normal way, but also fires off an email to the commentor with the content of the response and his original comment.

Installation

1. Download the plugin file, unzip and place it in your plugin folder.
This makes the plugin available to WordPress and it should now appear in your Plugin folder. The zip file also includes an icon for the plugin which should also be placed in the plugin folder.

2. Activate the plugin
This “starts up” the plugin. At this point, the plugin is active, but won’t work correctly till it is configured

3. Configure the plugin
The plugin can be configured both from a new panel in the Options menu called Comment Email Responder. Please go to this panel and supply the required information.

Usage

Once the plugin has been activated you’ll notice a new icon appearing next to commenter names on your posts. Click on this icon to respond to the comment. When you save the comment, a copy will be emailed to the person who left the comment.

Download

comment-email-responder

Comments/Bugs

  • The plugin behaves well with the Subscribe-to-comments plugin and won’t email someone who’s already subscribed to the comment thread.
  • The plugin assumes the existence of the “comment_form” action which is optional for template creators. If this is missing in your template, please add it accordingly.
  • The plugin assumes that your admin user is set to wp_user_level 10. While this is true in most cases, some WordPress installations mess this up. If the plugin doesn’t seem to work, check out the fix on Cynthia’s blog.

Screenshot

Here’s the plugin in action:

History

v1.0: Base release. Implementation by Andrew Flusche

v2.0: New version. Admin interface added and automatic insertion into template on activation

v2.1: Minor bug fixes

v2.21: Another couple of minor bug fixes

v2.3: Email now contains link to post together with a specified footer

v2.4: Fixes by Steven Ross from Bustspammers, a site about fighting spam.

Websites using this plugin

I love it when people use my work, so if you do, drop me a comment. I’d love to pop around and have a look at your blog.

266 comments

  1. Hi!

    I’m trying to get your wonderful plugin working and have run into the following problem: when I click on the envelope, I get:

    Barbara

    as the name. I’m assuming this isn’t right?

    Thank you for your insights,

    Barbara

  2. Hey owen,
    you might want to add a line of detail to the install steps instructing the user to put the plugin in a folder named comment-email-responder under the plugins folder. If not, icon won’t be found or shown, and you’ll just have the text Comment Email Responder next to the commenter’s name.

    otherwise, very cool plugin, thanks!

    kevin.

  3. @Barbara: those screens don’t look familiar to me. Where are you responding to your comments from ?

  4. If you want a more personal email put this. Thanks for the plugin. 🙂

    //$cer_from_name = $options[‘cer_from_name’];
    $cer_from_name = get_usermeta($_POST[‘user_ID’], ‘display_name’);

    //$cer_from_email = $options[‘cer_from_email’];

    $cer_from_email = get_usermeta($_POST[‘user_ID’], ‘user_email’);

  5. How wonderful! I just happened upon your site and found this great plugin. I’d been looking around for something like this for a while, but I just hadn’t found anything that really worked quite right. Thanks much!

  6. In testdriving it (responding to a comment I left while logged out) It doesn’t seem to be mailing comments to me.

  7. For some reason, my link to your site didn’t show up in pingbacks…sorry! But I found the link to the plugin through Playgroups Are No Place For Children, and LOVELOVELOVE it! The only thing I would love to see change about it is the possibility of nesting the comment underneath the one you’re responding to. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about code to make it happen :/

  8. @Devilish: Unfortunately the plugin doesn’t support comment nesting at the moment. Maybe a future version …

  9. Hi Owen,

    Its a wonderful plugin I just love it.

    As of now functionality of this plugin is limited to the administrator of the blog, I want to know if this can be extended to the “editors” on the site.

    Thanks,
    -Abbas

  10. It’s designed specifically for WordPress. Blogger doesn’t have the same open API to develop plugins for

  11. This a great plugin. i was hoping for something like this to finally mesh into my ecommerce sites for user feedback. Thanks a heap!!

  12. The envelope icon shows up next to the commenters names on mine, but when I click on them nothing happens – it doesn’t appear to any sort of link, just an image.

  13. Hi Owen. Is there any way to get this working from within the admin panel where comments are approved? Or from within the better comments manager? Thanks.

  14. @Erika: Clicking on the button should activate a piece of Javascript that’s in your blog header. Your theme could be missing this.

    Here’s what to try:
    Switch to the WordPress default theme and see if it works. If it does you have a theme problem.

  15. I’d been looking for this plugin and am glad I found it. However, mine works on IE but not on FF3 I wonder why. Nevertheless I’m glad its working on at least one platform! 🙂

  16. I’m a little confused about how this plugin work. I know i should try it my self, but because i’m still new on WordPress and i don’t want to make any mistakes. So i want to ask just 1 question. Is this plugin works like Blogger comment(if someone comment and select email notification then the other person comment. The previous commentator will receive the email notification?) Thanks before:)

  17. Thanks a ton for this plugin! It’s always frustrated me that I had to reply to a comment, then also send the person an email if I wanted to be sure that they’d get the reply. Keep up the good work!

  18. Is there a way to add an option for the commenter to check a box if they do not want to receive an email? Then my reply will still show on the blog, but if the commenter doesn’t want the email, she won’t get it.

  19. Will you be updating this plugin for WordPress 2.7… so that we can reply with an email comment straight out of the Comments area of the new admin panel? I would love to be able to do this. 🙂 Thanks.

  20. I am trying out your plugin on my new domain, using WordPress 2.7 and the Vigilance theme. I don’t even see the mail icon! Help!

  21. НЕ в тему немного, но радует, что автор к блогу не просто тупо взял какую то тему для Вордпресса, а сделал что то свое и вкладывает в это дело душу.

  22. Thanks for the fabulous plugin!!! I just got it up and running on my site. I’m using it along with Brian’s Threaded Comments plugin and it works beautifully.

    I’d love to have the ability to publish one comment on my blog that is e-mailed to multiple commenters. Is that possible?

  23. Hi there,

    I’m completely new to moderating a blog!

    Can I use your plugin to send an email with questions to the person receiving the email?

    Many thanks,

    Eric

  24. Hi, using this plugin on WP2.7 and it works fine, BUT, (please reply to this bit!), WP2.7 allows me to reply to comments via the dashboard. This plugin needs to be integrated into that feature desperately.

    Please feed back to me if there are any plans for this, I don’t think too much coding is involved?

  25. Please tell me…how to configure the plugin? go to this oanel? Where is it? Xplain ti all, step by step..please!!
    thanx before 🙂

    [The plugin can be configured both from a new panel in the Options menu called Comment Email Responder. Please go to this panel and supply the required information.]

  26. Love the plugin and have been using it for a long time. Just upgraded to 2.7, though, and while it still works, replies don’t get threaded. Does something need to be updated on your end or on my blog?

    Thanks.

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