How to Notify Users When Their Comment is Approved in WordPress

Letting commenters know when their comment is approved is a simple yet powerful way to encourage conversation on your site. 💬

However, WordPress doesn’t notify users by default when their comments go live. This can leave them wondering if their message was received or if it’ll ever appear. And that uncertainty might discourage future engagement.

Many website owners have asked us how to fix this, so we’ve put together this guide to help! 🙌

In this tutorial, we’ll show you the easiest way to notify users when their WordPress comments are approved, keeping discussions active and your audience engaged.

Why Notify Users When Their Comment is Approved in WordPress

Comments allow your website visitors to communicate with you and other readers.

They are a great way to get engagement and feedback and can help build a community around your WordPress blog.

By default, WordPress puts all new comments into a moderation queue. You can see these comments in the admin area, but they won’t appear on your website until you approve them.

Comment moderation is the best way to keep discussions safe and spam-free.

However, WordPress’s default settings don’t notify users when you approve their comments.

So, visitors would need to keep checking your WordPress site to see whether their comments have appeared.

However, most commenters may forget to do that. Sometimes, visitors may even assume you’ve rejected their comment if they don’t get a notification.

By confirming that you’ve published their comment, you can encourage visitors to return to your WordPress website. This is great for engagement and can create a more interesting and lively discussion.

With that in mind, we’ll show you how to notify users when you approve their comments. Here’s a quick look at all the topics we’ll share in this guide:

Let’s jump right in!

How to Notify Users When Their Comment Is Approved in WordPress

The easiest way to notify people when you publish their comments is by using Comment Approved Notifier Extended. This plugin is simple to set up and lets you send a custom email to your users.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, the plugin works automatically. Every time you approve a comment, WordPress will send a notification to that person’s email address.

If you want to change the content of the email, simply click ‘Comment Approved’ in the WordPress dashboard.

You’ll then see the default email template with various shortcodes. These shortcodes automatically insert specific information into the email, such as the commenter’s name or post title.

When it creates an email, Comment Approver Notification will replace the shortcode with real information.

For example, it will replace [commentauthor] with the user’s name and [commendedposttitle] with the blog post in which the user left a comment.

Simply type or paste any shortcode into the email editor. You can also type in plain text, as seen in the following image:

In the ‘Mail Body’ field, you can edit the template to change the message users receive when their comment is approved.

When you’re happy with how the email looks, you can go ahead and click on the ‘Update’ button.

Now, Comment Approver Notification will send the new email to your users.

Bonus Tip: How to Export Email Addresses from WordPress Comments

Once you’ve engaged users through comment approval notifications, you might want to consider further communication strategies.

One option is to export email addresses from WordPress comments to build a mailing list. Provided you have user consent, you can:

• Add people to your email newsletter for updates and tips.
• Import them into your CRM for personalized outreach.
• Use them for targeted Facebook ad campaigns.

Each method helps engage your audience and expand your reach, but always ensure you respect user preferences and privacy regulations.

For detailed instructions, you can read our article on how to export email addresses from WordPress comments.

We hope this article helped you learn how to notify users when their comment is approved in WordPress. Next, you can also go through our guide on allowing users to subscribe to comments or our expert picks of the best email verification tools to clean your email list.

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