WP Comment Notification

Description

By default WordPress sends the “Please moderate” email only to the site admin email address (and to the post author when they can edit the comment). On a site with several editors, moderators or a support team, comments easily wait in the moderation queue without anyone noticing.

WP Comment Notification lets you decide who receives these emails. Add any number of email addresses, optionally include the author of the post, and choose whether the same people are also told about new approved comments.

Features

• Your own recipient list – send the “Please moderate” email to any number of addresses, for example your editors, moderators or a shared support inbox.
• Post author – optionally email the author of the post that received the comment as well.
• Approved comments – optionally send the “New comment” email to the same recipients when a comment is published straight away or approved later.
• Moderation emails you can rely on – comments held for moderation are always emailed to your list, whatever the “Email me whenever” options under Settings > Discussion say.
• No noise – spam and trashed comments are never emailed, and nobody receives an email about a comment they wrote or approved themselves.
• Address check – addresses are validated when you save: invalid ones are skipped and listed, duplicates are removed, and the settings page warns you when nobody would be notified.
• Standard WordPress emails – the emails are sent by WordPress itself, so they keep the usual wording, translations and Approve / Trash / Spam links, and work with any SMTP or email log plugin.
• Works with pingbacks, trackbacks and WooCommerce product reviews. Block editor notes keep WordPress’s own notifications.

How it works

1. Go to Settings > WP Comment Notification.
2. Enter the email addresses, separated by commas or one per line.
3. Tick “Notify post author” and “Approved comments” if you want them, and save.

Until you save the settings for the first time, the site admin email address and all administrators receive the moderation emails.

Privacy

The plugin only stores its settings. It does not track visitors, set cookies or send data to external services. Emails are sent with your site’s normal WordPress mail function.

For developers

Change the recipients in code with the wp_comment_notification_recipients filter. It receives the email addresses, the comment ID and the context: moderation (comment held for moderation) or approved (new approved comment).

add_filter( 'wp_comment_notification_recipients', function ( $emails, $comment_id, $context ) {
    if ( 'moderation' === $context ) {
        $emails[] = '[email protected]';
    }
    return $emails;
}, 10, 3 );

Technical details