If you’re like me you get annoyed with yourself when you know what you should be doing but you see yourself slipping. It’s been like that for me with commenters on my blog.
See, if you’ve commented on my blog, I want you to know I really appreciate the effort you’ve gone to, to be part of the conversation. The least I could do is fire off a quick email to you and thank you for your thoughts. But that’s where it all kind of goes pear-shaped for me, because it’s hard. Yes… it’s hard.
See, I have to approve your comment, then I have to copy your email address from the right page in WordPress, then I have to go to Outlook and draft an email, and repeat all that for the next commenter. The heart is there, but the patience is not.
Then earlier today the rather obvious thought occurred to me to see if anyone had created a plugin to automate this just a little… and guess what?!? Someone released just such a plugin, only three weeks ago! Perfect timing.
Enter the Comment Relish plugin by Justin Shattuck. Brilliant!
What this nifty little plugin does is detect the first time someone new comments on your blog. If it’s their first time commenting, it sends them an email that you can format using a bunch of preset variables. You can make the email say pretty much whatever you want. Then the plugin takes care of the rest, sending the email off to the commenter post haste.
Now being a nit-picky kind of guy I made one minor change, to resolve two concerns I have:
- I don’t want the email going directly to the commenter. I want the email sent to me, so I can check the wording, any weirdnesses (like changing the greeting from “Hi Darren Jones” back to just “Hi Darren”), and so I can add my own words to the template if their comment warrants it. Sometimes people also make obvious email address typos and I can check for these, this way.
- I don’t want a comment sent the moment they submit the comment. That’s not natural. By sending me an email, a more organic and natural exchange occurs. It may be hours before I see that email to adjust it and pass it on, but that’s more real to me.
Now these two issues demanded only the most minor change to the plugin… just changing their email address to mine, in the function call that sends the email. Nothing more.
So I’m a pig in mud. I now have my blog sending me nice pre-formatted thank you emails to send on to new commenters on my blog. I get to be friendly and personal, but without the hassles of “manual preparation” I used to have. Yay!
Update
Commenter Joe wanted to know exactly what I changed in the plugin to get it to send to me, instead of the commenter directly. Well, on line 239 (of the current version of the plugin, anyway!) you’ll see the function call that sends the email. It’s the native PHP mail() function. It takes a number of parameters (separated by commas), and you just need to replace the first one with your email address, making sure to wrap it in inverted commas, like this: "fred@foo.com". And that’s all there is to it!
36 Comments
you were wondering... I believe in rewarding commenters!
I just wanted to compliment your awesome posts thus far. I’ve only been a subscriber for a few days, but it seems like everything you write is great. I’ve definitely enjoyed reading your blog.
I’m really intrigued by this plugin. I’ve been wanting a better system for this too. Maybe it will save some keystrokes.
Thanks,
Andrew
This sounds like a great idea. I took a quick look through the code, and changed what I thought was the write part to do what you suggested, but got some bad syntax. Could you share what you changed to make it e-mail you instead?
@Joe – I’ve updated my post with a clearer explanation of my change. I hope that’s all clear for you now
Very cool idea. I like that you’ve tweaked it to send the email to you first. It would be so obviously machine-driven and impersonal to get an email thanking me for my comment the instant I posted it.
Maybe a dumb question: How does the plugin deal with any spam that gets through Akismet? (I know you’ve added a step of your own that catches anything Akismet lets through, but what if someone hasn’t done that?)
Duh, I was on the right line, but only replaced the second part of the first variable. I think it’s working now (I’ll have to wait for a comment, but it activated fine). I also like your thinking on lifting the no-follow from comments. I’ve switched my ITsVISTA blog to drop the no-follow, as well as incorporating ‘Comment Relish’. Thanks for getting me thinking about this, I think these ideas will help make my blog even better!
Good one Al.
I am sure to give this one a shot
Cheers!
A
Quite a neat plugin. I’ll give it a try and play with it. Thanks for the heads up!
Awesome find Alister. I love smart plugins like this.
Hey Alister,
Great post, this a really great plug-in. I run a few different blogs and like you said the heart is there to send out response/thank yous but it’s really just too time consuming. Thanks!
This is good to keep in mind. I’m not really busy enough to actually need this at the moment, but you never know, a miracle may happen.
Sounds like a cool plugin. I’ll test it out right now, I’m curious about what the e-mail looks like.
here is another optimization for the comment relish plugin. This is a performance optimization so that the plugin will not slow down your blog if you have many comments.
Be prepared for more comments here, as Darren mentions your way to deal with new commenters
It sounds to be a pretty nice pluggin and I will try it. Thanks for discover.
hey, can you give some more detailed instructions for the noobs on redirecting the mail to yourself instead of the commenter. Wat is the exact code your deleting and replacing with your email address?
Hi Alister, that’s an excellent idea and also the reason that I didn’t implement this plugin yet. I’ve received the auto-generated emails before and I know exactly what you mean about how they seem, well, auto-generated!
This sounds interesting. I’m going to try it out on one of my blogs this afternoon. Thanks!
PS I also wanted to leave you my first comment to see what it in action!
thx very much
Alister, great idea for implementing this plugin. For some reason, I’m having trouble finding the right part of the code to replace, although I suspect it may be because of an updated version of the plugin being different from what you mention in your post. Any tips?
test, I want get a email…
thank you for your help my friend
Alister, Thanks for this! I like the being personal style
Shall see the plug-in in action eh
Cheers,
From Singapore
I know this is old, but I like the idea you implemented. With a newer version, I was wondering where I should insert my email (i.e. what does the line to change currently say)? I tried what looked like the right place, and it definitely wasn’t! I’m using PatchLog’s v.3 from here: http://patchlog.com/wordpress/more-optimization-for-comment-relish-plugin/
Very very smart move the way you adapted the plugin. Thanks for the recommendation, I appreciate it.
Regards
Andrew
I wanted to comment just to see an example of the email you got in return.
This is just what I was looking for. Thanks a ton.
This is great!!!
Am installing it now!
This plugin is exactly what I have been looking for. To tell the truth, I was about to start writing one when I found your post.
Great time saver, and follow up with commenters is incredibly important and usually badly overlooked by bloggers.
Cheers,
Ron
I read at the top that your comments from posters are NOT no-follow. But, when I “view source” they ALL show as rel=”nofollow”.
Did you change your mind? If so, would be a good idea to remove the claim that they are no nofollow.
The very first comment on this post is from Andrew and his link shows as:
There you go. #;>)
Great blog though.
Ron
Hi, I have the latest WordPress and the latest version of the Comment Relish plugin. I too would like to have it email me the thank you message first. Can you post detailed info about how to make this change to the plugin code. Or maybe the person that made this plugin could add this as an option.
I can’t tell u how badly I needed this plugin..
It will help me to grow my blog..and make my one time visitor into regular reader…
thanks for the link.
Regards
P@r@noid
AlisterCameron: Hey mate, the plugin has been re-written (again) and seems to be functioning quite well, might giving me a shout as to what you think of the modifications and performance?
I’d appreciate any bugs anyone finds, feel free to hit me up.
Thanks in advance, let me know.
Justin Shattuck
nice plugin,thanks for sharing this.
nice plug in thanks for this.
Thank you for this information. This is all very technical for me, and I’ve been struggling to get my blog more, well, technical I guess. It’s like the perpetual learning curve. Articles such as this one really help me out, although the “Greek” in the post script will take some muddling for my mind.
Off to try and figure it out! Thanks again.
So I’m a pig in mud… This is a great article and I really agree with you! This sounds as a really good idea!
Awesome! this is what i was looking for
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[...] should thank first-time commenters because that personal touch will greatly improve your and their sense of relational [...]
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[...] Email 更个性化，请看看我的朋友 Alister 怎么做的。这里还有一个类似的插件，叫做 Comment Email [...]
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[...] Inoltre ogni qualvolta un nuovo utente scrive sul nostro blog possiamo dargli un benvenuto automatico [...]
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[...] Alister Cameron’s approach and have those first-time comment e-mails sent to you. Personalize the e-mail, and then send them out to the [...]
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[...] reading a post on Alister Cameron’s blog I came across a wordpress plugin that makes the whole process of connecting with every new visitor [...]
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[...] use automated e-mails to first-time commenters, I suggest using Alister Cameron’s approach by having these e-mails sent to you and then personalize and send them them out.Alister lays out his reason for personalizing the [...]
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