Apr 30 2008
Comment email responder
Like Plain Jane Mom and others have lamented, it’s hard to know whether to reply to commenters via email, ie privately, or to respond to them via your blog in the comments, ie publicly. The trouble with the former is that the conversation is lost on your blog and the trouble with the latter is that the person you’re responding to via another comment might not check back to read it. Of course, you could do both (which I have occasionally done) but this is clunky and a bit time consuming.
But there is a way which I have just implemented here. A Wordpress plugin called Comment email responder. This means:
The response becomes a comment in the normal way, but also fires off an email to the commentor with the content of the response and his original comment.
I haven’t tested it yet because I’ve had no comments since I added the plugin so I’ll give it a go and see what I think. I’d like to know what you think too.
I struggle with this too … blogger is not sending email notification anymore either so I can’t send emails unless I go look them up.
I am also finding comments being missed on older posts
That is such a nifty idea, I might try it out too. I should reply to comments more than I do, would be too much to reply via email..but a lot of people don’t come back to read.
Let us know how it goes after our comments
Thanks for trying out my plugin. Let me know if you have any problems with it
Owen
That’s such a good idea.
That is an excellent idea. I often have that conundrum - do I reply individually or on the comments, and often I fail at all attempts anyway.
A plugin - weren’t computers designed to try and make our lives easier? Great idea.
The jolly thing isn’t working for me yet. Will try to fix it as soon as I can (am at work at moment though).
Owen, my apologies for all the two prior emails I sent you but I figured out the problem. I’d put the plugin files in the plugin folder and didn’t keep the comment-email-responder folder. The comment responder icon was referencing the folder I didn’t have. Once I created the folder, moved the plugin files back into that folder everything now works. Phew. Hope this makes sense.
Trish, I’ve got the plugin working now. It’s a pity about the lack of Blogger email notifications. Maybe it’s time to switch to Wordpress?
Leigh, I know I don’t go back to read comments just because I forget and if I subscribe to comments and there’s a lot of them it becomes annoying. I’ll see how this goes. It’s a pity, they weren’t threaded more because I’m replying now, my comments are appearing at the end of all the other comments.