Kau-Boy’s Comment Notification Plugin

This plugin enables blog admins and editors to manage the notification of incomming comments. As WordPress only has the option to notify on every comment, the email account of the admin may recieve many email each day. Notification is also limited to the admin only, so only the admin user will recieve an email for incomming comments.

Using the plugin you can subscribe to a RSS feed that contains even comments that has to be moderated. Every feed entry has the links to delete a comment, mark a comment as spam or approve a comment, if the comment has to be moderated. If a comment has been marked as spam, it will no longer appear in the feed.

Installation:

Installation trough WordPress admin pages:

  1. Go to the admin page Plugins -> Add New
  2. Search for kau-boy and choose the plugin
  3. Choose the action install
  4. Click on Install now
  5. Activate the plugin after install has finished (with the link or trough the plugin page)
  6. You might have to edit the settings, especially the language you want to use

Installation using WordPress admin pages:

  1. Download the plugin zip file: kau-boys-comment-notification.1.3.zip
  2. Go to the admin page Plugins -> Add New
  3. Choose the Upload link under the Install Plugins headline
  4. Browse for the zip file and click Install Now
  5. Activate the plugin after install has finished (with the link or trough the plugin page)
  6. You might have to edit the settings, especially the language you want to use

Installation using ftp:

  1. Download the plugin zip file: kau-boys-comment-notification.1.3.zip
  2. Unzip und upload the files to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory
  3. Activate the plugin through the Plugins menu in WordPress
  4. You might have to edit the settings, especially the language you want to use

Screenshots

Screenshot of the feed dashboard widget

Screenshot of the feed dashboard widget

Change Log:

  • 1.3 Remove line break at bottom of feed to prevent a parse error as described here: http://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/error/WPBlankLine.html
  • 1.2 Adding option to hide new WP 2.9 trash comments
  • 1.1 Adding nice icons to the feed and an option to hide them
  • 1.0.1 Removing “short open tags” which causes error on blog that don’t have “short_open_tag” set to “On”
  • 1.0 Adding user data (Name, E-Mail, Website) and option to hide them, adding tackback/pingback avatar icon to feed
  • 0.6 Adding option to hide all types of comments to build feeds for special needs like a feed only for moderation
  • 0.5 Adding the customization option to the dashboard to make it visible to editors
  • 0.4 Adding option to include spam comments into feed to recognize false positives marked by Akismet
  • 0.3 Adding links to read the comment in the blog and to reply to the comment
  • 0.2 Adding option to customize feed, adding avatars to feed
  • 0.1 First stable release

If you like the plugin or if something is missing I would like to here it. Just leave a comment on this page or on my WordPress plugin page.

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Posted by

Bernhard is a full time web developer who likes to write WordPress plugins in his free time and is an active member of the WP Meetups in Berlin and Potsdam.

17 comments » Write a comment

  1. The admin can use your plugin, but we can not see how editors can assign to the comment feed.

    The add-on entry in the left column sidebar is only visible for admins.

    regards
    Håkan

    • Håkan thanks for this note. I didn’t know that it would only be visible for admins. My first choice for the feed option was a button on the Dashboard, but I haven’t found out how to do that.

      I will upload a version that will also work for editors later this day. If you have access to the database you can bulid the feed with the user data yourself. Or just wait for todays update.

      • Thanks Bernard,
        Now it works for me. An editor will see it at the bottom of the dashboard and can then Open custom feed.

        Another useful application would be for an editor to open a feed only for new comments waiting to be moderated.

        • Håkan that’s a very good idea for the plugin. I will add that option in the next update.

          I think it would be the best to give the users the choice to add the diffrent types like regular, spam and modeartion comments, so they can just have the feed they need.

  2. Hi, My comment notifications by email seem to have stopped arriving. I have tried using your plugin to begiin receiving notifications again but even with your plugin I am still not recieving emails when new comments arrive. Any ideas would be appreciated. I have all the options setup in wordpress settings > discussion area to notify me but I recieve nothing. I also have askimet set up. Thanks

    • Hi Dave,

      my plugin doesn’t affect the e-mail notification of WordPress and it doesn’t provide an e-mail notification, yet. You can build yourself a RSS feed which you can add to a mail program like Outlook, to a RSS-ready browser or to an online feed reader like Google Reader.

      I used my plugin to create a feed with spam and moderation feeds only so that I keep track of things I have to do with the comments. And I got a second feed with all moderated and approved comments on my phone to read useful comments every I am.

      Is there some functionality you are missing with the plugin? The problem with the integrated e-mail notification might be some rights problems on your webhoster. Or it may be caused by any other plugin you have installed. Is there anything installed that has to do with comments or with sending e-mails? You might deactivate all comment and then test the notification again. If it works activate one plugin at a time and test the notification again. Then you might find the plugin that affects the notification.

  3. After installing your plugin, how do I access the plugin dashboard to control the settings? I want to hide approved comments. Thanks.

    • First, make sure that you have activated the plugin through the “Plugins” overview. Than navigate to your dashbord. If you don’t see the widget, click on the “Screen Options” at the upper right on your dashboard and activate the “Comment Notification RSS Feed” widget.

      If it does not work or you have any further questions, just leave another comment.

  4. Hi Bernhard – I’ve installed the plugin (which looks extremely useful) but when I try to generate the RSS feed I get the following error:

    XML Parsing Error: XML or text declaration not at start of entity
    Line Number 2, Column 1:<rss version="2.0"
    ^

    I've had this problem before with standard WP RSS feeds and have used the 'Fix RSS Feed' plugin to clean the feed up – I think the plugin strips any blank spaces from the start of the feed – and make it readable. Do you have any idea how I could do the same for the feed generated by your plugin?

  5. Hi Darren,

    I used the RSS feed template from WordPress as a basis for this plugin. I didn’t thought that there would be an issue with it.

    I just removed a line break at the beginning of the RSS. Please update to version 1.3 and test it again.

    • Thank you very much for applying a fix so quickly. But I’ve deleted and re-installed the plugin with a v.1.3 download and I’m afraid it still doesn’t work and I’m getting the same error.

      I’ve also run through the files mentioned in that validator.w3.org page that you linked to and a few more in the wp-includes directory and taken out any unnecessary whitespace I could find, but still the same error.

      Thanks anyway.

  6. …and just to confuse me further, I’ve installed the plugin on a second site and it works perfectly first time!

    Must be a problem with my installation – I’ll re-upload a fresh copy of WP, see if that helps.

    Cheers!

    • On which RSS application do you get this error? Maybe I can reproduce it on my PC and find a working solution for this error.

      • It’s just occurred to me that I’m using the Feedburner Feedsmith plugin to redirect the main site feed to Feedburner – I wonder if that’s clashing with yours..? I’ll try deactivating that and see if it makes a difference.

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