WP Comment Notification

1. Overview

WP Comment Notification lets you choose who receives the comment emails that WordPress already sends. It does not send any email of its own. It changes the recipients of two standard WordPress emails:

• "Please moderate": sent when a new comment, pingback or trackback arrives and is held in the Pending queue.
• "New comment": sent when a comment is published straight away or approved later. The plugin only takes over this email when you tick Approved comments (off by default).

Out of the box, WordPress sends the "Please moderate" email to the site admin email address, and to the post author when that author can edit the comment. The "New comment" email goes to the post author only. On a site with several editors, moderators or a support team, that means comments can wait in the queue without the right people noticing. This plugin lets you add as many addresses as you need, optionally include the post author, and decide whether the same people also hear about approved comments.

Because WordPress builds and sends the emails, they keep their usual wording, translations, subject lines and action links. Only the list of people they go to changes.

How it works

1. You enter email addresses and choose two options on Settings → WP Comment Notification.
2. When a new comment is held for moderation, WordPress prepares its "Please moderate" email. The plugin tells WordPress to send it, even if A comment is held for moderation is unticked under Settings → Discussion, and replaces the recipients with your list (plus the post author if you ticked Notify post author).
3. If you ticked Approved comments, the same happens for the "New comment" email when a comment is approved.
4. WordPress sends one separate email to each recipient, so recipients do not see each other's addresses.

At a glance

What it does not do

• It does not change the wording, subject, layout or sender of the emails. Those come from WordPress and can be changed with WordPress's own filters (see Core filters that still apply).
• It does not decide which comments are held for moderation. That is controlled by Settings → Discussion and by any anti-spam plugin you use.
• It has no per-post, per-category or per-author recipient lists in the settings screen. For routing like that, use the wp_comment_notification_recipients filter (see The recipients filter).
• It does not email commenters, does not send digests, and keeps no log of sent emails.
• It does not change notifications for block editor notes (WordPress 6.9 and later).
• It has no shortcodes, blocks, REST routes, WP-CLI commands, widgets, scripts or styles.

2. Requirements

The plugin has no requirement checks of its own and shows no message when something is missing. WordPress itself uses the Requires at least and Requires PHP header lines when you activate a plugin.

3. Installation

1. Open Plugins → Add New Plugin, search for "WP Comment Notification", then click Install Now and Activate. You can also upload the plugin folder or zip file through Plugins → Add New Plugin → Upload Plugin.
2. Open Settings → WP Comment Notification. A Settings link also appears next to the plugin on the Plugins screen.
3. Check the address list, choose your options and click Save Changes.

What activation creates

Nothing. The plugin has no activation routine: no database tables, no options, no roles, no scheduled events, no pages. The only stored data is one option, wp_comment_notification_settings, and that is created the first time you save the settings screen.

Updating

Update through the normal Dashboard → Updates or Plugins screen. The plugin has no upgrade or migration routine, so an update never rewrites your saved settings. The 1.5.0 upgrade notice in readme.txt says existing settings are kept.

Multisite

The plugin can be activated on a single site or network-wide. It has no network admin screen. Each site has its own Settings → WP Comment Notification screen and its own stored option, so every site in the network has its own recipients. The default list (before a site's first save) uses that site's admin email address and that site's administrators. Deleting the plugin removes the option on every site (see Privacy).

Deactivating and deleting

Deactivating keeps your saved settings in the database and returns comment emails to WordPress's default recipients. Deleting the plugin from the Plugins screen removes the saved settings. The plugin has no deactivation routine.

4. Quick start

1. Activate the plugin, then open Settings → WP Comment Notification.
2. In Notification email address(es), enter the addresses that should receive the "Please moderate" email, separated by commas or one per line. The box starts filled with your site admin email address and your administrators' addresses. Remove or add addresses as you need.
3. Tick Notify post author if the author of the commented post should be emailed too.
4. Tick Approved comments if the same people should also get the "New comment" email for approved comments.
5. Click Save Changes. If a message lists addresses that were skipped, correct them and save again. If a yellow warning says no recipients are set, add an address or tick Notify post author.
6. Test it. Under Settings → Discussion tick Comment must be manually approved, then post a comment on a post while logged out (a private browser window works). Everyone on your list should receive a "Please moderate" email.

5. Features

Several details below describe what WordPress core does after this plugin has chosen the recipients. Those parts were checked against WordPress 7.1.2 and can differ in older versions.

The two emails the plugin controls

The "Please moderate" email

This email is always on. The plugin does not have a switch for it. To stop it for everyone, leave the address list empty and leave Notify post author unticked (the settings screen then shows a warning, because that is rarely what you want).

• When it is sent. WordPress sends it when a new comment is created and is waiting for approval. It is not sent when an approved comment is later set back to Pending, because WordPress does not send it for status changes.
• Which comments. Only comments whose status is Pending (held for moderation). Approved, spam and trashed comments never trigger it.
• The Discussion setting is overridden. The plugin returns "send" for every pending comment, so A comment is held for moderation under Settings → Discussion has no effect while the plugin is active. This is true from the moment you activate it, not only after the first save.
• Who gets it. The recipient list described in How the recipient list is built. Nobody is removed from this email because they wrote the comment.
• What it contains. WordPress's standard text. See What the emails contain.
• Which comments are held. This is not the plugin's decision. WordPress holds comments according to Settings → Discussion (for example Comment must be manually approved, Comment author must have a previously approved comment and the Comment Moderation options) and any anti-spam plugin.

The "New comment" email off by default

Tick Approved comments to send the "New comment" email to your list. It is sent when a comment is published straight away and when a pending comment is approved later.

• When it is sent. WordPress triggers it when a comment is created already approved (through the comment form; a comment created through the REST API does not trigger it, see Troubleshooting), and when a comment is set to Approved through WordPress's status function. That covers the Approve link, the Approve action on the Comments screen (single and bulk), approving through the REST API, and restoring a comment from Trash or Spam when it was approved before. Changing a comment's status inside the Edit Comment screen does not trigger it in WordPress 7.1.2, so no "New comment" email is sent in that case.
• Which comments. Only comments whose status is Approved. Pending, spam and trashed comments are never sent. Comments of the type "note" are left to WordPress.
• The Discussion setting is overridden. While Approved comments is ticked, the email is sent whether or not Anyone posts a comment is ticked under Settings → Discussion.
• When unticked, the plugin does not touch this email at all: WordPress sends it to the post author as usual, following its own Discussion setting.
• Who is left out. The person who wrote the comment and the person who approved it (see Who is never emailed).

How the recipient list is built

For each email, the plugin builds the list in this order:

1. It starts with the saved addresses. If you have never saved the settings, it uses the default list (see Before you save the settings).
2. If Notify post author is ticked, it adds the email address of the user who is the author of the post the comment belongs to. This is skipped if the post has no author account or the account has no email address. The author is added whether or not they could edit the comment themselves.
3. It trims each address, drops anything that is not a valid address, and removes duplicates. Duplicates are matched ignoring upper and lower case and only one copy is kept. If the post author's address is already in your list, the spelling from the author's user account is the one used.
4. "New comment" email only: it removes the addresses of the person who wrote the comment and the person who approved it (see Who is never emailed).
5. It passes the result through the wp_comment_notification_recipients filter (see The recipients filter), then removes anything that is not a valid address. If a filter returns something that is not an array, nobody is emailed.
6. It hands the list to WordPress, which sends one email to each address. For the "New comment" email, WordPress applies a few extra checks of its own to the post author's address (see Who is never emailed).

The plugin ignores any recipients that WordPress or other plugins had already put in the list at an earlier stage. It replaces the whole list with the one above. See What it works with for the filter priority involved.

Who is never emailed

• Spam and trashed comments. Neither email is ever sent for them. The "Please moderate" email needs the status Pending. The "New comment" email needs the status Approved.
• Block editor notes (WordPress 6.9 and later; comment type note). The plugin returns WordPress's own decision and recipients unchanged, so notes keep WordPress's default notifications.
• The commenter and the approver, on the "New comment" email. The plugin removes from the list: the email address entered on the comment, the email address of the registered user who wrote it (if any), and the email address of the logged-in user performing the action (for example the person who clicked Approve). Matching ignores upper and lower case. This does not apply to the "Please moderate" email.
• The post author, in three cases (WordPress core, "New comment" email). WordPress removes the post author's address when the post author wrote the comment, when the post author is the logged-in user moderating the comment on their own post, and when the post author can no longer read the post. WordPress matches the address exactly as it is stored on the author's user account (including upper and lower case), so this also applies when the author's address comes from your list.
• Nobody at all. If the list ends up empty, WordPress sends nothing.

Before you save the settings

The plugin only stores settings once you click Save Changes. Until then:

• The recipients are the site admin email address (Settings → General) followed by the email address of every user with the Administrator role. An administrator whose address matches the site admin address (ignoring case) is not repeated.
• The address box on the settings screen is filled with that list.
• Notify post author and Approved comments are both off.
• The "Please moderate" email is already sent for every pending comment, whatever the Discussion setting says.

The first time you save, whatever is in the box becomes a fixed list. Administrators you add to the site later are not added automatically. An empty box you save is stored as empty and does not bring the defaults back.

Address checking when you save

When you save, the plugin cleans the address box:

• It splits the text wherever it finds a comma, a semicolon, a space or a line break. The screen text only mentions commas and lines, but spaces and semicolons work as separators too.
• Each piece is cleaned and checked with WordPress's email functions. Valid addresses are kept with their original upper and lower case. Duplicates are removed, ignoring case, keeping the first one.
• Anything invalid is skipped. The settings are still saved, and WordPress shows a warning at the top of the screen: Settings saved, but these addresses are not valid and were skipped: ... followed by the skipped entries, comma separated. When that warning appears, WordPress does not also show its usual "Settings saved." message.
• The saved list is stored as one comma separated string.

Things that count as invalid include text without an @ and an address whose domain has no dot (such as name@localhost). Display names do not work: Jane Doe <jane@example.com> is split at the space, so you would see Jane and Doe reported as skipped, while the last piece is cleaned by WordPress (the angle brackets are removed) and saved as jane@example.com. Enter plain addresses only.

Example. If you enter:

editor@example.com; Moderator@Example.com, editor@example.com
not-an-email

the plugin stores editor@example.com,Moderator@Example.com and shows Settings saved, but these addresses are not valid and were skipped: not-an-email.

The "nobody is emailed" warning

At the top of the settings screen, a yellow warning appears when the address box is empty and Notify post author is unticked:

No recipients are set, so nobody is emailed about comments held for moderation. Add at least one address or enable "Notify post author".

The warning is about the "Please moderate" email. It does not appear when the box has at least one address, or when Notify post author is ticked (even with an empty box).

The settings screen

Open Settings → WP Comment Notification (page address options-general.php?page=wp-comment-notification). The screen needs the manage_options capability. It has the heading "WP Comment Notification", a short introduction, the warning described above when it applies, three settings and a Save Changes button. The settings are saved through the standard WordPress settings system (options.php). The introduction reads:

Comments that are held for moderation are always emailed to the recipients below, whatever the "Email me whenever" options under Settings > Discussion say. Comments marked as spam are never emailed.

Every setting, its label and its allowed values are listed in Settings.

What it works with

• SMTP and email log plugins. WordPress sends each email through wp_mail(), so SMTP plugins, transactional email plugins and email logs see these emails like any other WordPress email.
• Pingbacks and trackbacks. They are comments of a different type, and WordPress uses its pingback and trackback wording for them. The plugin treats them like comments.
• WooCommerce product reviews. The plugin contains no WooCommerce code. It acts on whatever WordPress sends through its comment notification functions, and the readme states that product reviews held for moderation reach your list like other comments. That depends on how WooCommerce stores reviews, which is not part of this plugin. One WooCommerce detail matters here: in WooCommerce 11.1.2, WC_Comments::comment_moderation_recipients() is hooked to comment_moderation_recipients at priority 10 and cuts the list for comments on products down to the site admin email address (the post author is dropped). This plugin runs at priority 999 and replaces that list with yours.
• Block editor notes. Left alone, as described above.
• Multisite. Per-site settings, see Multisite.
• Other plugins that change comment recipients. The plugin registers its callbacks at priority 999 on the WordPress filters comment_moderation_recipients and comment_notification_recipients (the latter only when Approved comments is ticked). It returns its own list and ignores the list it received, so recipients added by another plugin at a lower priority are discarded. A plugin that runs after it (priority above 999) can still change the final list.
• Languages. The email text is WordPress's. When WordPress sends an email to an address that belongs to a user account, it switches to that user's language for that email.

What the emails contain

WordPress writes the emails, so the exact text depends on your WordPress version and language. In WordPress 7.1.2:

• "Please moderate". The post title and link, the commenter's name, IP address and host name, email address and website, the comment text (and a "In reply to" link for a reply), then links to Approve it, Trash it (Delete it when the trash is switched off) and Spam it, followed by the number of comments waiting and a link to the moderation page. For pingbacks and trackbacks the wording changes accordingly.
• "New comment". The post title, the commenter's name, IP address and host name, email address and website, the comment text, the link to the comments on the post and a permalink to the comment. The Trash it (or Delete it) and Spam it links are added only when the post author is allowed to edit the comment. There is no Approve link, because the comment is already approved. The email's Reply-To header is the commenter's address when the comment has one.

The action links open the WordPress admin. Whether the person who clicks them can act depends on their own user account and permissions.

6. Settings

There is one settings screen, Settings → WP Comment Notification, with three settings. They are all stored together in one option, wp_comment_notification_settings (see How the settings are stored). The form field names are wp_comment_notification_settings[wp_comment_notification_emails] and so on.

Texts shown on the settings screen

How the settings are stored

The option holds an array with three keys, always written together when you save. The checkboxes are stored as '1' or ''. The option is registered with the WordPress settings system as an array and is not exposed through the REST API settings endpoint.

array(
    'wp_comment_notification_emails'   => 'editor@example.com,moderator@example.com',
    'wp_comment_notification_author'   => '1',
    'wp_comment_notification_approved' => '',
)

7. Developer reference

The plugin is one class in one file. It has no shortcodes, blocks, REST routes, WP-CLI commands, AJAX or admin-post actions, scheduled events, database tables, post, user or comment meta, transients, roles, template files, scripts or styles, and it does not read any constants you can define. It checks the core capability manage_options for its settings screen and adds no capabilities of its own.

The recipients filter

The plugin fires one filter of its own.

The plugin removes duplicates before the filter runs, not after. If your callback adds an address that is already in the list, the "Please moderate" email goes to that address twice. Check with in_array() before adding.

Examples

Add a team address to the "Please moderate" email:

add_filter( 'wp_comment_notification_recipients', function ( $emails, $comment_id, $context ) {
    if ( 'moderation' === $context ) {
        $emails[] = 'team@example.com';
    }
    return $emails;
}, 10, 3 );

Add an extra address to every email about comments on a post type called product, without adding it twice:

add_filter( 'wp_comment_notification_recipients', function ( $emails, $comment_id, $context ) {
    $comment = get_comment( $comment_id );
    if ( $comment && 'product' === get_post_type( $comment->comment_post_ID ) && ! in_array( 'shop@example.com', $emails, true ) ) {
        $emails[] = 'shop@example.com';
    }
    return $emails;
}, 10, 3 );

Send approved-comment emails only to the post author, ignoring the saved list:

add_filter( 'wp_comment_notification_recipients', function ( $emails, $comment_id, $context ) {
    if ( 'approved' !== $context ) {
        return $emails;
    }
    $comment = get_comment( $comment_id );
    $post    = $comment ? get_post( $comment->comment_post_ID ) : null;
    $author  = $post ? get_userdata( $post->post_author ) : false;
    return $author ? array( $author->user_email ) : array();
}, 10, 3 );

WordPress hooks the plugin uses

WordPress applies notify_moderator twice for each new pending comment: once before calling wp_notify_moderator() and once inside it. The plugin gives the same answer both times.

Core filters that still apply

The emails are built by WordPress (wp_notify_moderator() and wp_notify_postauthor()), so WordPress's own filters still work on them. These names exist in WordPress 7.1.2:

• comment_moderation_subject, comment_moderation_text and comment_moderation_headers for the "Please moderate" email.
• comment_notification_subject, comment_notification_text and comment_notification_headers for the "New comment" email.
• comment_notification_notify_author: return true to stop WordPress removing the post author's address in the cases described in Who is never emailed.

See wp_notify_moderator() and wp_notify_postauthor() in the WordPress developer reference.

Option

To read a setting in code, use get_option( 'wp_comment_notification_settings' ) and check that the result is an array: it is false before the first save.

The class

The plugin defines WP_Comment_Notification (guarded by class_exists()) and stores the one instance in $GLOBALS['wp_comment_notification']. The option name is available as WP_Comment_Notification::OPTION. The class is not a documented API and may change, but these public methods exist in 1.5.0:

File layout

• wp-comment-notification.php: the plugin header and the whole class.
• uninstall.php: removes the option when the plugin is deleted.
• readme.txt: WordPress.org readme and changelog.

The plugin uses the text domain wp-comment-notification. It does not call load_plugin_textdomain() and ships no languages folder.

8. Privacy

9. Troubleshooting

10. FAQ

11. Changelog

1.5.0 - 29/09/2026

• Fix - Email addresses are validated and sanitised on save (invalid ones are reported and skipped); empty entries no longer cause wp_mail() calls with an empty recipient.
• Fix - Block editor notes (WordPress 6.9+) were sent to the notification list instead of the post author when "Approved comments" was enabled.
• Fix - The person who wrote or approved a comment no longer receives the "New comment" email about it.
• Fix - Settings output escaped; the "Notify post author" checkbox rendered an invalid attribute.
• Fix - The pending comment count used a direct database query; the moderation email is now built by WordPress core, so it keeps core wording and translations.
• New - Option to send the "New comment" email for approved comments and replies to the same recipients.
• New - wp_comment_notification_recipients filter.
• Tweak - Settings link on the Plugins screen; settings page uses the standard admin layout and warns when nobody would be emailed.
• Tweak - Settings are removed when the plugin is deleted.
• Tweak - Tested with WordPress 7.1 and PHP 8.2 - 8.5.

1.4 - 30/07/2022

• Fix - Compatibility Fix.
• Fix - Code updated.

1.3 - 09/04/2021

• Fix - Compatibility Fix.
• Fix - Code updated.

1.2 - 05/11/2019

• Fix - Mail notification tweaks.

1.1 - 29/07/2017

• Fix - Mail notification disabled for comments caught in spam.

1.0 - 16/07/2017

• Initial Release.

12. Support

For help, email support@wpexpertshub.com. You can also open a topic in the WordPress.org support forum; bug reports and feature requests are welcome there too.

Please include:

• Your order ID, if you have one.
• The plugin version (Plugins → Installed Plugins), your WordPress version and your PHP version.
• What you expected, what happened instead, and what you have already tried (for example the contents of the settings screen and whether other plugins change comment emails).
• The type of comment (normal comment, reply, pingback, trackback, product review) and whether it was held for moderation or approved.