You can receive email notifications when you receive comments on your WordPress.com website. This guide will show you how to be notified of new comments via email.
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To turn on email notifications for new comments, take the following steps:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings → Discussion on the left side.
- Scroll down to the “E-mail me whenever” section.
- Toggle on the option to receive an email when “Anyone posts a comment”.
- Optionally, toggle on the option to receive an email when “A comment is held for moderation” for comments set to remain private until you approve them.
The email notification will be sent to your account email address.
The comment notification emails include the following information:
- Title of the page or post where the comment was posted.
- Comment author’s name, IP address, email address, and website URL if provided.
- Comment contents.
- URL of the page or post with the comment.
- Links to approve, delete, or mark the comment as spam.
After receiving a comment notification email, you can reply directly to the email. The text of your reply will be included as a public comment reply.
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This feature is not currently accessible on sites with plugins installed or hosting features activated, due to extra platform requirements. Instead, you can reply to comments directly on the post or via the Comments section of your dashboard.
For replies via email to make it through to your comment section, they must contain the quoted comment notification message. Alternatively, add !END on its own line at the end of your email.
Most email clients will include the original message in an email reply. WordPress.com scans the body of the email, looking for this quoted section, and strips it out (along with anything below the quoted reply). If your message does not include a quoted section, you’ll need to add the following on its own line at the end of your reply:
!END
When WordPress.com reads !END (on a line by itself), it will use it as a marker and ignore everything below that line. Everything above !END will become a comment on your site. This allows you to use email commenting even if quoting is turned off in your email client.
Different user roles have different permissions when it comes to receiving comment notification emails:
- The site owner can receive comment notifications for all posts.
- Other administrators (aside from the owner) can receive comment notifications for posts they have authored.
- Editors can receive comment notifications of posts they have authored.
- Authors can receive comment notifications of posts they have authored.
- Contributors don’t receive any comment notifications.
There are a few things to check if you are not receiving comment notifications emails:
- You have enabled comment email notifications.
- You are using the correct email address for your WordPress.com account.
- Emails are arriving in your spam or junk folder.
- Your account is the author of the post where comments are being left.
