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Is Your WordPress Blog Not Notifying You Of Comments?

  • I upgraded all my blogs a couple of weeks ago to 2.3.1. Ever since then I have not received any notifications when someone has left me a comment. It was driving me crazy!

    So I posted for help on the WP support forum. At first, it looked like I was destined for the lonely sound of crickets. But then a wonderful person, CreativeChick, found the solution in another thread and brought it to my attention.

    I don’t claim to know the why’s and what’s, but the solution is really very simple. The solution that worked for me was to make a slight modification to my pluggable.php file. This is located in every WP install at: root > wp-includes > pluggable.php.

    You’ll want to comment out line 228:

    $phpmailer->Sender = apply_filters( 'wp_mail_from', $from_email );

    So it should look like this:

    //$phpmailer->Sender = apply_filters( 'wp_mail_from', $from_email );

    Once I uploaded the file, I made a quick test comment. Seconds later I received the glorious sound of Gmail notifying me I had a gift arrive in my inbox.

    Ah, yes, my blog is speaking to me now. :mrgreen:

    [tags]blog,wordpress,comments,notification[/tags]

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32 Comments
  1. #1 Kyle Eslick (35 comments.) says:
    November 9, 2007 at 10:12 pm

    Mark,

    This is very useful!

    I’ve noticed I get notifications for some comments, but not all comments, though I only get notifications for new commentators.

    Kyle Eslick’s last blog post is: Firefox Extension: Better Gmail 2.0

  2. #2 Mark (844 comments.) says:
    November 9, 2007 at 10:18 pm

    @Kyle
    I was wondering if you had heard of this. :) With me, it was EVERY comment and I hate silence. What I find odd is that the WP guys haven’t pounced upon this as it would seem to be quite a significant problem for bloggers. Oh well, at least it’s fixed for now and hopefully they will have made a permanent fix in the next release.

  3. #3 Christine Senter (22 comments.) says:
    November 9, 2007 at 10:56 pm

    I might have to give this a shot as I’ve got one blog that tells me when regular users leave a comment, but never tells me when someone new comes along.

    Of course, those are usually the spam comments that I really don’t want clogging my blog.

    Christine Senter’s last blog post is: I broke the 10K mark

  4. #4 Mark (844 comments.) says:
    November 9, 2007 at 11:07 pm

    @Christine
    Can I just tell you what a pleasure it is to be receiving notifications about these comments? LOL

    Hey everybody, go over to Christine’s blog and give her some words of encouragement for her nano novel she’s working on. She only has 40,000 more words to go. Woo-hoo! You go girl! :lol:

  5. #5 Christine Senter (22 comments.) says:
    November 9, 2007 at 11:22 pm

    LOLOLOL,

    Thanks Mark. I appreciate that little boost. LOL.

    And I actually only have 36,293 words to go, but who’s counting. LOLOLOL

    Christine Senter’s last blog post is: I broke the 10K mark

  6. #6 Tay (58 comments.) says:
    November 11, 2007 at 2:08 am

    I don’t be notified of my comments but I’m having another problem – now, people can’t comment at all. I haven’t done any upgrades or anything at all lately but I did just add the Sphinn, PlugIM, and Blogging Zoom plugins. Now when I comment on my site I get a blank page and the comment never sends, and someone else got an error. I also cannot view my plugins page. People were able to comment after I installed all those plugins for quite a while, so I doubt that’s the problem. However, I’m not sure if the two are connected and I’m hoping it’s a temporary problem. I’m not good at figuring things like this out so if anyone knows what’s wrong I’d appreciate your advice. :)

    Tay’s last blog post is: Calling For Your Articles About Blogging

  7. #7 Mark (844 comments.) says:
    November 11, 2007 at 10:52 am

    @Tay:
    When I tried commenting on your blog, it kept asking me to download your wp-comments.php file. Do those plugins have anything to do with that page?

    Since you can’t get to your plugins page, I recommend you go in behind the scenes to remove those plugins manually. Then let’s see what happens. Let me know!

  8. #8 Tay (58 comments.) says:
    November 12, 2007 at 12:42 am

    Thanks Mark. None of those comments have anything to do with it that I know of, so I’m not sure. I’m still receiving comments so some people are obviously able to get through, but others aren’t. It’s very strange. I am guessing it has something to do with one of my plugins though so I’ll try to get it straightened out. Thanks for your help! :)

    Tay’s last blog post is: The Best of the Blogosphere: November 11, 2007

  9. #9 Sara (1 comments.) says:
    November 14, 2007 at 2:22 am

    :mrgreen: I’m glad I could help! I’m very happy to have found a solution to the endless silence when someone made a comment on my blog. :cool: Here’s to TONS of comments that arrive for moderation in our in boxes! And thanks for the ping!

    Sara’s last blog post is: Last call for Christmas cards!

  10. #10 Mark (844 comments.) says:
    November 14, 2007 at 7:33 am

    @Sara:
    I’m looking forward to those tons of comments coming my way! Thanks again for your help and for stopping by. :)

  11. #11 betshopboy (9 comments.) says:
    November 14, 2007 at 11:58 pm

    Hi Mark

    I encountered similar problems (and more) ever since I upgrade to WP2.3.1

    I still get notifications for some comments, but they are delayed for a few days!

    In addition, the “incoming links” on the dashboard no longer report the most current incoming links. It just stop at the point when the upgrade was done. :sad:

    betshopboy’s last blog post is: Bloggers Of The World Unite!

  12. #12 Mark (844 comments.) says:
    November 15, 2007 at 12:02 am

    @betshopboy
    Hey, good to see you here, buddy! Sorry to hear about the notification problem, but maybe this little tip will help. And I’m so glad you mentioned the problem with the incoming links on the dashboard. That was beginning to worry me, too. I’ve only had a few links added to that list, but with the increase of incoming links I KNOW I’m getting from other blogs, they’re just not showing up like I expect. I hope it sorts itself out soon.

  13. #13 Opal Tribble (9 comments.) says:
    November 15, 2007 at 9:42 am

    Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I’ve had the same issue. A few comments sat on my niche website for days before I noticed them. Gah! I’m having problems with my incoming links also. I was going to let you know that I mentioned you in my posting today but you beat me to it. :-)

    Opal Tribble’s last blog post is: Do You Want To Be A Successful Blogger? Be The Blog

  14. #14 Sibbia (1 comments.) says:
    November 15, 2007 at 9:42 am

    I’m so glad you posted this!

    I made the change immediately, now I’ll have to see whether it’s fixed or not.

    Thank you!

    Sibbia’s last blog post is: So you want to be enlightened?

  15. #15 Mark (844 comments.) says:
    November 16, 2007 at 12:23 am

    @Sibbia
    I hope it works out for you. Thanks for stopping by! :)

    @Opal
    Thanks for the mention. I have my fingers crossed that this fix will work for you and that the link thing is also going to right itself. I’m addicted to that in my dashboard just like I need to know my stats. :)

  16. #16 Dave (1 comments.) says:
    December 6, 2007 at 10:30 pm

    You rock Sir, CreativeChick too wherever she may be. Thanks for posting this, it was driving me nuts! :wink:

    Dave’s last blog post is: Going Postal on my Mail

  17. #17 Mark (844 comments.) says:
    December 6, 2007 at 10:35 pm

    @Dave
    LOL You’re quite welcome. :)

  18. #18 Mike (1 comments.) says:
    February 26, 2008 at 9:41 am

    Hi Mark

    I encountered similar problems (and more) ever since I upgrade to WP2.3.1

    I still get notifications for some comments, but they are delayed for a few days! :mrgreen:

  19. #19 Mark (844 comments.) says:
    February 26, 2008 at 11:48 pm

    @Mike
    Hey there! Actually, from time to time I seem to get that same thing happening to me. Not sure what that’s about. Very frustrating though.

  20. #20 Matt (1 comments.) says:
    July 25, 2008 at 3:34 pm

    Thanks for the fix on this….

    I have not had time to address this issue until now…and thanks to your fix, I can get comments emailed straight to my inbox..

    yay!

  21. #21 Mark Sierra says:
    July 26, 2008 at 2:09 pm

    @Matt
    Thanks for taking the time to comment! Glad to have been of some help to you. :)

  22. #22 Ian (2 comments.) says:
    July 26, 2008 at 9:40 pm

    Hi Mark,

    Does this work for WP 2.6 as well?

    I believe the code is a bit different. The closest thing I found to the code that you listed was the following:

    Lines 354 and 355

    $phpmailer->From = apply_filters( ‘wp_mail_from’, $from_email );
    $phpmailer->FromName = apply_filters( ‘wp_mail_from_name’, $from_name );

    Do I comment out either of those lines? If so, which one(s)? If not, what do I do to my WP 2.6 install so that it notifies me of new comments?

    TIA

    Ians last blog post..How to Activate Windows File Sharing in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

  23. #23 Mark Sierra says:
    July 30, 2008 at 10:23 pm

    @Ian
    Hi there! I apologize for the late response. Once I finally got to the new files, I was surprised to find quite a difference. Looks like they’ve changed things up a bit. Unfortunately, my previous fix doesn’t seem to apply here. However, that they mean that they updated the code to where it’s no longer an issue. I could be wrong, but I would encourage you, if you haven’t already, go to their support forum and do a search first, then post the question. I’m sorry I couldn’t have been of more help. :(

  24. #24 Ian (2 comments.) says:
    July 30, 2008 at 11:33 pm

    Hi Mark,

    No problem. I actually have already searched and can’t find anything. The closest I thing I found to a fix was this blog post of yours. ;)

    Ideas?

  25. #25 Download Games (1 comments.) says:
    January 16, 2009 at 6:50 pm

    Hmm… I followed your instruction but guess I couldn’t find the lines that should be commented. I’m running WP 2.7. Guess the code had been changed over the versions since your instructions are for 2.3.1 I guess? I had been having the problem since versions 2.5.x.

    Nevertheless, thanks for posting this. Maybe I should check some more.

  26. #27 ranking verbessern (1 comments.) says:
    January 24, 2009 at 8:10 pm

    Finally I found a solution. One of my buddies was having a similar problem and inquired me about it. Found your site while I was googling around. Well the code looks good but the only problem would be, will it support 2.7?? Anyway I will try to twist d code around and try it out. Thanks for the information. Cheers

    • #28 Mark Sierra says:
      January 24, 2009 at 9:53 pm

      @ranking verbessern
      Glad you found this useful. Welcome to MeAndMyDrum! :)

      If you find something new with your tweaking, please come back and update us.

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