Are you using comment notification by email?

For as long as I remember, WordPress has had the option to send an automatic email to the admin whenever someone posts a comment. I used to have that option enabled. I love responding to comments right away. It helps keep discussions alive and it helps to keep you blog clean of any spam that might slip through Akismet. With the succes of WP-Cumulus however, the volume of comments has been increasing steadily, and I’ve had to disable comment notification.

For every new email I get, my Nabaztag rabbit’s lights flash, my Google Talk icon changes, and I get a notification box in the lower corner of my screen. When I’m working, that can be quite distracting. In fact, these signals are meant to distract me. Sometimes there’s important business to take care of, and as a freelancer I need to reply to some emails asap. Most comments however do not fall into that category.

So, are you using email notification for your blog’s comments? What made you decide to turn it off (or on)? Any tips for keeping tabs on your comments in a less intrusive way?

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Roy | September 6, 2008 | English, Personal, WordPress | Comments (21)
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21 Comments

  1. I use email notification because I can’t fully trust my comment spam blocker. I get few enough legit comments that I like to be aware of them so that I can reply and thank them for stopping by.

    Comment by Brian — September 6, 2008 @ 6:08 pm

  2. I also have it switched on for my blog… same reason as Brian… more spam than bonafide comments. But I can imagine it drives you nuts if you have lots of kosher comments. Perhaps there’s a way to make the mail into a digest? Like twice a day or something? Good idea for a plug-in if it doesn’t already exist?

    Comment by suzero — September 7, 2008 @ 2:52 pm

  3. I have too say that the spam/ham ratio (after Akismet) is more like one to ten for my blog. It really is a great service. The only real spam problems occur when Akismet is down, but that doesn’t happen very frequently, and usually when I’m asleep.

    I think there’s a plugin that does digests, but that would still mean that spam is on your blog for up to 24 hours before it gets deleted (assuming daily digests).

    Comment by Roy — September 7, 2008 @ 5:10 pm

  4. Actually, now we’re talking about it, I just noticed that I am not receiving the e-mails – hmmm… so there are comments awaiting approval but I don’t know about it. Grrr..

    Comment by suzero — September 8, 2008 @ 8:28 am

  5. By the way, I use Spam Karma 2 for antispam which does a pretty awesome job (click my name to view my blog and see the spam quantity at the bottom of the page). Unfortunately the developer just abandoned the project so I don’t know whether that means it will be less effective over time. I found SK2 to be FAR superior to Akismet in spam harvest and in the very detailed interface.

    Comment by Brian — September 12, 2008 @ 5:04 pm

  6. I’ve actually switched from SK2 to Akismet. SK2 is great, and there’s even an Akismet plugin for it, but it’s also a large plugin that’s updated quite frequently (or at least it used to be). I found Akismet to be almost as effective, and far simpler to maintain.

    Comment by Roy — September 12, 2008 @ 7:32 pm

  7. How DO YOU turn off comment notification? I’m trying to do that myself. The e mails are also driving me to distraction & I’d rather just visit the WP comment interface & deal w. comments in that way.

    Comment by Richard Silverstein — October 1, 2008 @ 9:48 am

  8. @Richard: If you go to ’settings -> discussion’ there should be a section called ‘e-mail me whenever’. Simply uncheck the appropriate boxes there.

    Comment by Roy — October 1, 2008 @ 1:48 pm

  9. i have not getting any comment
    pls help me
    what is the Comment Notification Email i should put??

    inform me to this id
    gireeshvengaraa@gmail.com

    Comment by gireeshvengaraa — October 29, 2008 @ 2:33 pm

  10. Apart from spam blocker one should use comment notifications.

    Comment by Sean "costa caleta" Redfearn — November 2, 2008 @ 2:10 pm

  11. I use comment notifications also, keeps the distractions down, but I don’t forget about keeping the blog up to date

    Comment by webhosting-dir — November 8, 2008 @ 2:23 am

  12. Your article is nice theme, I use email notification because I can’t fully trust my comment spam blocker. I get few enough legit comments that I like to be aware of them so that I can reply and thank them for stopping by.

    Comment by Villas in Seminyak — March 24, 2009 @ 2:41 pm

  13. hi, “Apart from spam blocker one should use comment notifications.”
    thanks.

    Comment by sağlık — April 9, 2009 @ 10:53 pm

  14. Comment notification would be a usefull tool to eradicate mails with spams

    Comment by Alice Hall — April 18, 2009 @ 12:43 pm

  15. Yes I use email notifications because like you, I enjoy replying comments. What I so is I have a separate email for my wp alone. And I use messenger that supports multiple accounts so I can always ignore the pop ups for a while.

    Comment by Best Web Hosting Company — May 14, 2009 @ 3:21 am

  16. Forget about e-mail notifications and check it all by hand.
    There are smoother ways of blocking most of the spam:
    http://mashable.com/2008/02/10/fighting-spam-wordpress/

    Regards,
    Alfred

    Comment by Alfred — June 5, 2009 @ 7:01 pm

  17. Actually, now we’re talking about it, I just noticed that I am not receiving the e-mails – hmmm… so there are comments awaiting approval but I don’t know about it. Grrr..

    Comment by oyUn — June 22, 2009 @ 7:11 pm

  18. i go with Alfred there are better ways to this problem manual way of removing it is the option but its too tiresome.

    Comment by Meg Stefani — June 24, 2009 @ 9:08 am

  19. Actually, I am (of course) using Akismet. I sued to have email notification enabled just to catch the spam that came through. The sheer number of spam comments is getting ridiculous on this blog, and even a 99.9% accurate filter will let one slip by every couple of days.

    Comment notification emails aren’t an alternative to proper spam filtering, but it will help you keep your blog clean. Other options are to periodically check the comments manually, or using the comments RSS.

    Comment by Roy — June 24, 2009 @ 10:10 am

  20. You made some good points there. I searched this topic and found out that most people will agree with your blog.

    Comment by Winship — June 24, 2009 @ 5:17 pm

  21. Bonus totally insightful, for this opinion.

    Comment by Sell Rent Back — July 3, 2009 @ 4:44 pm

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