Comment moderation is the most effective way to keep discussions safe and spam free. However, when a user has left comment, they have no way of finding out whether you have approved their comment. For users writing thoughtful responses to your posts, a notification for comment approval will bring them back to your site. This is good for user engagement and quality of discussion on your site. In this article, we will show you how to notify users when their comment is approved in WordPress.
Video Tutorial
If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.
First thing you need to do is install and activate the Comment Approved plugin. Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » Comment Approved to configure the plugin.
You can modify the email notification sent to user when their comment is approved. There are two shortcodes available. You can use %name% to display the comment author name, and %permalink% to add the post’s link inside the email template.
Don’t forget to check the ‘Enable’ checkbox to actually enable the emails. Once you are done click on the Save button to store your settings.
If you have checked the box next to ‘Comment author must have a previously approved comment’ on the Settings » Discussions page, then the comment author will only get notification for their first comment. This ensures that you are not sending too many emails. If you are having trouble sending emails, then check out our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending email issue.
We hope that this article helped you notify users when their comment is approved in WordPress. You may also want to take a look at our tutorial on how to notify users only on replies to their WordPress comments.
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Ben says
Any way to do this without a plugin?
Thanks!
WPBeginner Support says
There is, however that would require some coding which would be less beginner friendly than we would like this article to be
Admin
Ben says
Makes sense, I’m trying the Better Notifications for WordPress plugin in the meantime, thanks.
Syed Balkhi says
Haven’t tried it on a multi-site.
Syed Balkhi says
Yup CommentLuv is a good alternative. Thanks for the comment Jeannette
James Moriana says
Good information. This feature would be very helpful for the WP users who manage WordPress blogging websites.
pravdamien says
any idea how well this would work in a multisite environment ?
Jane Etherton says
Fantastic idea, very easy to install and set up. Many thanks for this, your “Comment Approved”plugin is sure to increase interaction on my blog.
Jeannette Paladino says
This is good advice and I will pass this on to my blogging friends who do not have a method to respond to comments. Another option is to purchase ($67 single site) CommentLuv Premium plugin. The blog owner is notified when a comment is posted so s/he can reply. The plugin encourages the visitor to leave comments on future posts because for each comment a link is provided back to the commenter’s latest blog post.
Mark says
I know this is slightly different, but I find when commenting via jetpack (I think it was) I have no onscreen feedback as to whether my comment was submitted, nor do I see any “awaiting moderation”. I recently found out they are receiving the comments and I thought the comment form was broken…
Chris says
That’s crazy that this topic would come up just now. I was just thinking about this last week when I enabled comments in one of my themes. Thanks WPB