WordPress Plugin Review:
Comment Reply Notification
Commenters don’t know how much you care, until they know how much you care!
One of the ongoing struggles with encouraging reader interaction on blogs is … encouraging reader interaction!
There are many steps that go into adapting the commenting system on wordpress to best accomplish our goals. These include things like enabling threading, enabling commenters to subscribe to comments, giving high quality backlinks (dofollow, commentluv, keywordluv), minimizing forced logins, etc…
Another concept that many bloggers find helps with reader engagement is to notify the commenter when a follow up reply has been left to their comment.
Now there are a couple ways to approach this, and a couple obstacles, but I want to show you what’s working for me currently.
WordPress Plugin: Comment Reply Notification
Comment Reply Notification is a straight forward little WordPress plugin that enables you to set for the commenter to receive a email indicating that their comment has been replied to.
[Note: I recently switched to the ReplyMe plugin which is very similar, when this plugin wasn't updated for a bit. Both plugins are similar and work well and are stable. If you're using this plugin with no problem there is no reason to switch.]
This plugin’s feature set has been built into the “wp thread comment” plugin that folks with older themes need to use to enable comment threading if the default checkbox in WordPress does not work for them. (However, please don’t use that plugin on themes that support the native threading enabled check box.)
Unlike many other similar plugins available, this one by default includes both their original comment AND the reply comment.
You can select whether the commenter receives a notification when an author/admin replies to that comment or when anyone replies to that comment. You can force this to happen regardless… or you can provide a checkbox that can default to checked – or – unchecked to allow the commenter to decide.
You can customize the email subject line AND the body text, which is particularly useful as there are a lot of changes you can make to get it to “feel” right verbally. I found that it works okay by default, but that the original comment and reply comment kinda get smooshed together and it really needs an extra <br /> inserted between the two to open it up some visually.
This plugin does not automatically send them any sort of generic thank you SIMPLY for commenting, such as “Comment Relish” (which I have had trouble getting working at times) and “Thank Me Later” (which appears to be working) both do. Because of that, either of those could be used in conjunction with this one. However…
Thanking someone for commenting and letting them know that there has been a reply can be valuable assets in our toolbox for encouraging interaction. However, we still must find a way to deal with the laws surrounding it. One way or another, I think it’s fair to say that folks should have SOME way of finding out they are likely to receive a piece of email from you.
I chose to use the editable field in Keywordluv plugin, which I already run, to add a note of this fact. While it’s certainly not a full legal consent, at least it’s there. (Yes, I know it had gone missing, I had a upgrade hiccup, which reminded me to blog on this topic!)
Another way is to establish a page with your fully detailed comment policy – and the fact that you do send notifications – and put a plugin like “Comment-Policy” that forces the commenter to check a box and agree to the policy before they are able to leave a comment. However, many of you have heard me get on tangents over forcing the commenter to do more and more action steps “just” to leave you a comment. They’re doing YOU a favor, the goal here is to avoid punishing them for that. The fact that we often ask them to complete captcha is more than many of them wish they had to do! (That said, I would say that “Comment-Policy”… or setting the plugins setting to “Commenter choose to do so (default unchecked)” is the legally correct solution.)
Comment Reply Notification Summary
This simple little plugin helps you to further encourage reader engagement by making them aware of follow up comments. Because following up and replying on comments is not done on all blogs (only those interested in growing), many readers do not think to check back for replies to their thoughts and questions. This plugin helps with that, and also puts your name back in their inbox, hopefully bringing them back to your blog another time and giving them additional exposure time to your optin.
Remember that with all of these similar comment to email style plugins to honor at least the spirit of the law. Imagine that you are using your “best” email address and trying to minimize spam in it so you can actually get work done. Make your policy clear and your follow up worth their time. Hopefully it goes without saying that you also need to make your reply comment interesting!
So, what are your thoughts on receiving follow up emails on blogs you have commented on? Do you find them interesting? useful? tedious? annoying? Is this affected by whether you are there for some reason you enjoy versus being there simply leaving a comment so you can get your backlink from their blog to build your SEO? I personally prefer it, with or without an additional checkbox, over needing to subscribe to the whole thread that may be super-active, just to keep up with if the author replied to me. How about you?
Let me know your thoughts and if you found this information useful I would be grateful if you would share it with others!
Kimberly
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{ 52 comments… read them below or add one }
Ah, this is perfect for when i’d like to hear back if someone responded to me specifically without subscribing to the whole comment feed. Another great find
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Josiah, you cover a lot of blogs regular I believe, since you’re link building. Do you feel that having it auto-enabled is too much?
Kimberly
PS: I really appreciate your ongoing support and insight!
I just added the plugin to my blog, thanks Kimberly
Personally, I am not worried about sending someone a notification email if someone responds to their comment. There are so many other big fish out there for the law to worry about
Kimberly~
I really like to be notified when I leave a comment esp. on your blog Kimberly! I don’t like to receive a notice when everyone leaves a comment. I’ll re-read this post and decide what I want to do. I don’t want to insist that a comentor has to click the approval box, too much for me~
Thanks!
~Linda
Linda G. Cox invites you to read…The Bag of Gold
Hey Kim, You are my go-to gal for all my blog tech questions. I think that the more complicated it is… the less likely I am to stick around and comment. I do like to know if you have responded back to me but not all the comments, gets to be too much. Thanks for making this info available to us!
~Kara
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Kimberly,
I’m glad you brought this up. I’ve had an issue with one reader over the comments. I changed it and didn’t realize it sent out emails. When she brought it to my attention, it took a bit to get it stopped as I wasn’t sure which plugin had that. Non-techy here!
Anyway, I think I have it back right. Not sure. She has now seen the humor in the whole episode & understands I just plain goofed!
But it could cause issues. I personally don’t mind receiving them as it’s easier than going back to see what was said. If I choose not to read them, I can delete. It’s my choice, just like with SPAM.
Great discussion Kim!
Val
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Hi, I had this plugin before and it works great but then I upgraded to WP 3 and it suddenly stop working. I heard two conflicting info about this plugin, one friend said it’s not compatible with WP3 yet and another said it is compatible. I’m using Thesis 1.7 by the way.
I’m also on Wordpress 3.0 and Thesis 1.7. Perhaps you could come back and tell me if you receive this reply in your inbox? That’s one way to find out!
Thanks for your quick reply, Kimberly! Yes, I got your email notification so it does works. Hmm…I’m so lost as I’m not that tech savvy but let me uninstall and re-install it and test it.
Maureen invites you to read…Friday Flip-offs July Edition
Maureen you may not have ruled out that its not conflicting with another plugin. Also, it wont send to the site owner, so be sure you test it with a secondary email address
Let me know if I can be of any help!
Kimberly
That’s what I’m afraid of but I have no idea which plugin that cause it. I just reinstall it & used a proxy website to leave a comment on my post with a different email address and it’s still not working. How do I test which plugin causing the conflict? Should I deactivate them one by one?
Maureen invites you to read…Friday Flip-offs July Edition
Thanks Kim! Yes, I replied but it’s not working and that is after I deactivate a lot of my plugins. Here’s what’s running:
Akismet
CommentLuv
Comment Reply Notification
Favicon Images for Comments
Favicons
FeedBurner FeedSmith
LinkWithin
I’m almost giving up for now as I need to get ready to go somewhere LOL but thank you so very much Kim!
Maureen invites you to read…Friday Flip-offs July Edition
Hi Kim and Maureen! I think I know what the problem is.
This plugin doesn’t work for my blog when I check “when anyone replies” but works when I check “Replied by the author of the post or administrator ONLY “. Strange. This needs to be fixed.
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I caught up with Harsh tonight and he’s going to look into it and get back to me with a quote to fix the silly thing! It probably wont be as super-right-away as his team usually is, since I know he’s in the middle of a team transition, but we should know something soon’ish! Just wanted to give you ladies a headsup!
Kimberly
Hi Kim & Gloson,
Yeah I changed the setting to Reply by Author and I tried replying from dashboard…it’s not working but when I replied from the post/page itself it does work.
It is a bug probably. Thank you so much for all your help! I really appreciate it.
Maureen invites you to read…Friday Flip-offs July Edition
Thanks so much for this! I was running another e-mail reply plugin, but it went down a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been dying! Great post.
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will you update your plugin and make it compatible up to: 3.0
Leyond, it’s not “my plugin”, I’m not the original developer. I’m currently taking donations to hire a coder to fix the bug. Feel free to donate!
Hi Kimberly,
I was unable to reach your site a couple of days ago to thank you for pointing me to your review. So, Thanks! I’m going to get this plugin up and running as soon as I can!
Cheers,
Mitch
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Hey Mitchell, I’ve been in the process of doing a massive site move + repair + debug + rebuild. This is the tail end of day three and I THINK I now have most of the old links working. Even three days down is far better than the intermittant outages I had for over a month on the old host. Feels good to have my own hosting server and be able to sell hosting soon too!
I really enjoy comment reply notification – but I look forward to having enough donations to get it working from the dashboard too since its still having issues with that.
Glad to see you back!
Kimberly
So, Kim, I just visited this post for the umpteenth time. I’m doing my own “WordPress SEO Tweaks” and I just wanted to elt you know that I couldn’t have done it without your extensive reviews and advice!
I linked to this post (see CommentLuv) and quoted you. Hopefully, my readers will get a better understanding of the Commenting tools.
Cheers,
Mitch
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Hi Kimberly,
I have an idea with what is wrong here after looking at it. I did receive your message on facebook and will get back to you shorty…working on a few trac bugs but should be finished with those tonight
Yay! I’m excited, this is good news! This is such a great little plugin that its ashame to see it hobbled like this currently. I can’t wait to get it fixed! I’ll look forward to your quote for repair work! LOL
Kimberly
I recently upgraded to WP 3.0 and Thesis 1.7 and my WP Threaded Comment plugin stopped working. It would send the email but my replies would not appear on my site – only my dashboard. Now I have no ability to send the email and really would like to. How did you get the plugin to play nice with Thesis 1.7? Thanks!!!
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Brittany, thanks for stopping by!
First, WP3.0 + Thesis does not need wp threaded comment to get comment threading. Wordpress has that part covered by default. Here’s a post to show you what setting you need to enable after you disable that plugin.
http://just-ask-kim.com/how-to-enable-threaded-thread-comments-in-wordpress/
Then, grab the comment reply notification plugin for the email aspect your missing. It currently only works when you send replies from the “front end” of the blog (the page/post itself, what the visitor sees) rather than the dashboard, but we’re taking donations to get that fixed soon too! I have no trouble with that combo when I post on the front end of my blog getting the replies to appear in the dashboard and the email sent all at the same time!
That should straighten it all out for ya!
Kimberly
Ah….I have that installed but I still replied in the dashboard. I will now try replying from the site and let you know! Thanks!!!
Brittany at Mommy Words invites you to read…Pre-Schoolers Dream of Being Princesses
If you have wp -thread-comment and comment-reply-notification both installed they’re likely to have hiccups since they have similar code that would be “competing” (conflicting).
But yeah, replying from the post should solve things. Cant wait to get this one fixed!
Kimberly
Kimberly~
I think this is exactly what I want! I’m going to give it a try and see!
Why don’t you have the box checked by default? I’m going to check it and see if I get more than just the reply for this comment…that’s what I don’t want
Linda
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Hi Kimberly,
I have managed to edit the code of this plugin to make it work from the dashboard. An update should be made available quite shortly as I have contacted the original plugin author and sent it to him …
Thomas
Thomas you are now instantly my new best friend! LOL
As you’ll see when you get this reply I’ve just yesterday found another plugin that works very well for the same concept. I like its light coloring of the original and reply texts but am very grateful to see that one updated! Let me know if I can be of any assistance in any way!
Kimberly
I think it may be time we chip in and donate to get this one fixed and donated back to the WP repository.
Hi Kim,
This is a very comprehensive review of the comment reply plugin and I enjoyed reading it. I am considering to implement it on my personal blogs as well. Thank you!
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I wish there were more options of how to hear the updates for comments. I don’t want to hear everyone’s sometimes, only the administrator’s.
Where is the link to that plugin;
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It all depends on the content of the follow-up. Sometimes it’s frustrating asking a question that you only want to the answer for specifically, and then you get the mumbo-jumbo afterward for no reason. I like the idea of signing up for e-mail-ing if need be, but if it’s mandatory, I definitely get annoyed when my inbox fills up with useless information I don’t need.
This would be useful in my blog. Thanks. I’d like to see more of this please.
Hi Kimberly,
Thanks for posting detailed info about this plugin. I stumbled onto this functionality on another blog and have been researching how to implement it on our blog.
A problem I ran into that maybe you have some insight on: how do you change where the plugin displays in the comment area? Right now it insists on putting the checkbox underneath the “Submit” button… it would be better if we could get it above. Any ideas?
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Hello
I am already using Comment Reply Notification.
However I am trying to remove load by uninstalling plugins. Can someone help me finding manual Code Editing to get same functionality?
Thanks
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Thanks nice plugins …
Being notified if your comment has been posted is greatly an advantage and saves time. These will be really a great help if this will take effect on most blog post. I really do want to let this happen for convenience matter.
Hello Kim I read your posts regularly and probably this is my first comment on your blog.
This little plugin is amazing and i would like to give you thousand thanks for such awesome review. This is just great plugin after using this what is have noticed is there is huge increment in involvement of people. As far as my understanding this plugin is very beneficial for relation building and keeping our readers in single track so that they visit our site again and again and add some fruitful discussion in post.
Keep up your good work going on..
-Sam
Sam, welcome and thanks for taking a moment to comment! You’re spot on about how comment reply email plugins do a great job of bringing the readers back to the blog for a followup engagement. This opens up dialogs and discussions that really help a community flourish. You’re exactly right about why the plugins work and that’s a great point. I’ve actually switched over to using “ReplyMe” which is very similar to CRN and all the same ideas apply.
Kim
This looks like just what I want, but like so many plugins you end up finding something that looks good, but hasn’t been updated in ages and isn’t compatible (probably) with the latest version of Wordpress. In this case it hasn’t been updated for over 500 days, and the comments here suggest it’s broken. Shame…
I wondered how ReplyMe was working out, see you have another thread, off to look.
Start by deactivating all but akismet and maybe a few other essentials like commentluv and exclude pages from navigation and any thing that creates “broken” if its not running. Shouldnt be more than 5 or 6. Then test. If it works during that test you know its a plugin and can troubleshoot further. Be real careful about what’s in what you leave running though.
I commented on your blog – and you replied back – but I received no email, so its certainly not your own email account issue. Why don’t you give me a rundown of what plugins you left running during that?
Deactivate the favicon stuff. WordPress has gravatar.com integration and anyone with a gravatar will “magically” have their picture appear – no plugins needed. Plugins that mimic core features are known to cause serious and difficult to troubleshoot bugs and we try not to do that.
[This Reply Sent From Dashboard]
I run it set to author/post administrator only. I havent had a chance yet to check if I have the same bug that Maureen has. I was over on her blog to troubleshoot today and discovered that regardless of her theme or plugin combination, the plugin works just fine if she replies from the post itself. However, replies from the dashboard are not being sent as email. I’ll reply to you from both sides and perhaps you can tell me if you receive both or only one? Did you test the “when anyone replies” on both the front-side of the blog and the admin panel or should I re-test that?
Kimberly
[This Reply Sent From Post page itself]
I had to extend my threading setting to be able to reply “under” you from the post page, but it was worth finding out if you will only get this comment and not the prior one!
Kimberly
Haha… yeah. I only got the comment you replied from the post page. Strange bugs. I will let you know when I find an alternative to this plugin
.
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I initially tried another “comment email notification” that I can’t find the link to – and it was coded to only work from the front-end. I asked about getting it “fixed” and he informed me that the email depended on a full comment form. This may be a problem in this whole class of emails. I just thought I’d gotten around it!
Friend of mine, Harsh Agrawal from ShoutMeLoud.com has done plugin re-coding for me and others. I think it may be time we chip in and donate to get this one fixed and donated back to the WP repository.
Gloson, I’m curious why you don’t have any easy way to share your blog posts with social sites (twitter/etc). I was skimming around your blog and was going to share your stuff on twitter but tweetmeme buttons etc were missing. Is this a temporary remodeling thing or is there a reason you skip them?
Kimberly
Hi Kim!
Thank you for visiting my blog. I’m really glad you like my posts!
Oh dear… I’ve forgotten all about the tweetmeme buttons!
Thank you so much for reminding me! They are now back on the blog! =)
And thank you for trying to tweet my posts! I appreciate it!
Cheers!
Gloson
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