WordPress notifies the admin of a blog when a comment requires moderation. This is done regardless of the author of the post who does not get a notification at all (of moderated comments). I wrote a very simple plugin for WordPress that notifies the author of the post as well as the admin of the blog when a comment requires moderation. The plugin also assumes that you have moderation notify turned on in options. If the admin is the author of the post, he/she receives only one email.
Installation is as simple as download, unzip, copy to wp-content/plugins and activate. This plugin is running on this blog and has been tested on all 2.x versions of WordPress. Please submit bugs and suggestions.
Download modnotifyauthor.zip
Update: Download the updated version of Moderation Author Notify.
Great work Mark, another wonderful release of yours.
Thanks 🙂
Thanks Mark 🙂
Simple and useful 🙂
This one kicks back a ‘Cannot modify header’ error relating to line 2 for me. Not really sure why. It does, at least, add the comment, but it mucks the comments section up a bit until the page is refreshed.
JIm, that is very strange (unless there is an empty line at the end of the file that you uploaded). Could you email me the complete content of the error please? Thanks.
Ok, I tested it out on two different instances of WordPress:
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Warning: Missing argument 2 for wp_notify_mod_author() in /home/opendial/public_html/test/wp-content/plugins/modnotifyauthor.php on line 12
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/opendial/public_html/test/wp-content/plugins/modnotifyauthor.php:12) in /home/opendial/public_html/test/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 275
Plugins in use: Angusman’s Authenticated WordPress Plugin, Exec-PHP, WP-Contact-Form III (It even yields the same errors when I disable all the plugins. I’m running WP 2.1.2 in all cases.)
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Warning: Missing argument 2 for wp_notify_mod_author() in /home/opendial/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/modnotifyauthor.php on line 12
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/opendial/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/modnotifyauthor.php:12) in /home/opendial/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/ajax-comments/ajax-comments.php on line 193
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/opendial/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/modnotifyauthor.php:12) in /home/opendial/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/ajax-comments/ajax-comments.php on line 194
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/opendial/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/modnotifyauthor.php:12) in /home/opendial/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/ajax-comments/ajax-comments.php on line 195
Plugins in use: a lot (42 total), though it seems that AJAX Comments is one in particular that’s in conflict here.
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Hope that helps.
It definitely does Jim. I have updated the plugin, could you please try and upload it again?
The header errors are no more, but I can’t tell if it’s sending an email to the comment author. I used one of my own alternate email addresses for the test comment but haven’t seen a notification email come up for it. How does the plugin judge comment author – email address, author name, or IP address?
The plugin checks to see if the author of the post is also the admin of the blog. If that is not the case, it sends out an email to the author of the blog when a comment needs to be moderated.
Oh, I misunderstood. This plugin is for blogs that have multiple authors. Somehow, the way I read this was that this plugin was a courtesy plugin for comment authors who end up with comments in moderation. My bad…
A useful spin off from this would be a plugin that emails the comment author (so the visitor to your site, not one of the site’s authors) to thank them for their comment, and to tell them that their comment is in moderation. That would go some way to helping with the problems described here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r.....101840482/
That’s exactly what I thought this plugin did, hence my confusion on the subject. 🙂
Jim and Dan: That is not necessarily a good idea. Can you imagine how bogged your server would be if you ran into a comment spam flood? In addition, you could run into email spam/blacklist possibilities if you started sending out unsolicited emails. I know because I ran into this on a blog that I commented on. If I do not ask to be emailed, I would rather not get an email from you.
Yeah – that thought did strike me when I started to write the idea up for me own blog 🙂
Oh well.
Notify Author on Comment Moderation (tags: wordpress plugin) […]
Mark,
I noticed one tiny thing that might be useful to change in this plugin. In the WP Plugin listing page the title of this plugin links to the main page of this site rather than to this specific plugin page. This makes it a little difficult for users to come back and check for updates to the plugin.
Take care,
John
Mark,
What a perfect little plug-in!
Is there away to also change the default From email that WordPress sends. I want From emails to come from a custom email address instead of the default wordpress@yoursite.com
I tried another plugin caled ‘Mail From’ which does just that, but it seems to breakthe Moderation Notify Author plugin. My Authors stopped getting notifications…. no good. I need both email to Author, and a custom From email address. Thanks.
Oops! I take that back. The ‘Mail From’ plugin DOES WORK with this plugin Moderation Notify Author. They both work together perfectly with WP2.7. (The previous error was mine. I had entered an author email incorrectly and so just wasn’t receiving them.) Sorry! Love the plugin. Thanks!