This is an archived article. Please check my homepage for more up to date articles.
- Posted by Justin
- Posted in Featured Articles, wordpress
Visitors love interaction, especially a personable approach at gaining their attention and spiking their interests. Increasing the overall readership of your blog revolves primarily around content, accessibility and presentation. In an attempt to gain return readers and possibly subscribers, I present the newest version of Comment Relish: Version 2.0!.
Comment relish is a Wordpress plugin developed to send an e-mail message to users who comment on your website who have never commented before. The message dispatched to the user is defined within the plugin’s preferences. Numerous tags have been integrated to allow for information to be included in the message easily (I.E.: timestamp, author name, comment, ETC.). More thoroughly, it allows you to send out a genuine thank-you style / relishing message that informs your readers of what else is going on. However, this could be taken as (comment spam) unwanted solicitation, so make sure you write your messages clearly and not just about you and your feeds.
The newest release includes some obvious improvements over the previously neglected version uno and some major upgrades courtesy of C. Bavota from bavotasan.com. If you are currently using comment-relish and have not upgraded to Wordpress 2.7 because of its hectic and horrible reaction to the new code, have no worries – you can now! However, if you are running Wordpress 2.7 and you are upset that it was sending duplicate comments, endless comments to every commentor, or just flat-out broken – we fixed that too!
Installation
1. Download plug-in from link above
2. Extract compressed archive wpcomment-relish.zip to desired folder on your local computer.
3. Upload wpcomment-relish/ to your wp-content/plugins/ directory on your web server.
4. Activate plug-in via administrative panel of Wordpress
5. Configure preferences on Plugins->Comment-Relish preferences page
6. Enjoy!
Please comment on this article if you have any questions, conflicts or have ideas!
Apr 01
This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 12:11 pmand is filed under Featured Articles, wordpress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.The version of my website you are viewing is currently out of date. The content is still here as an archive and you are free to continue browsing it, however, I do recommend you check out my current homepage for more up to date information.
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104 Comments Comment Relish Version 2.0 Release
felipe
April 1st, 2009 at 3:37 pm
1This is really nice.
Thanks.
Jen
April 1st, 2009 at 7:01 pm
2Thanks, Justin. We have several places we can use this.
Robb Sutton
April 1st, 2009 at 7:50 pm
3w00T! Works perfectly…thanks Shatt!
Richard
April 2nd, 2009 at 2:17 am
4Just picked this up with your newsletter. I read some interesting objections to comment relish. Saying that it might be interpreted as comment spam. I think that is determined by the quality of the message you write and one crucial point (that’s not in your control Justin) is what webmasters write in this plugin to be posted out. This has to be as genuine and in-spam-like as possible, or else its going to get backs up. Thanking people for THEIR contribution and not trumpeting on about your site is essential to get the mix right.
Nonetheless, this is a great plugin, used properly, it has the pulling appeal of a rocket. Used badly it will nose dive your site like nothing else.
Glad to see you fixed those queries. So my existing commenters won’t suddenly get a strange thank-you, only NEW commenters, Right? …
Justin
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:52 am
5Richard,
That is correct sir, the queries are fixed and now only your first-time commentors will get the thank-you message. It took so long because I have had so many other projects eating up my time. But thank you for giving it another shot — if you find anything wrong or have suggestions please let me know. C. Bavota is really helping out a lot with it as well.
Jhay
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:52 pm
6Awesome plugin! This will surely help increase my blog readership. :)
JHad
April 3rd, 2009 at 12:25 am
7Thanks Justin!
I can hardly wait! :)
JHad
April 3rd, 2009 at 12:31 am
8Uuups, wrong tab :)
Missy
April 3rd, 2009 at 5:03 pm
9Hi, Justin:
I just followed you on Twitter as well. I have a quick question on the new CR.
What about the issues with certain webhosts like Dreamhost? Something about an incompatibility problem. I can’t remember the code that was causing an issue.
Let me know. Thx!
Justin
April 6th, 2009 at 10:52 am
10Missy, I think the issue should be fixed, however, it was a queries issue I believe. Those queries have been replaced.
Glen Allsopp
April 7th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
11I’m so happy you went around to fix this. I’ve been checking back on your blog everyday because around March 11th you left a blog comment on someones site saying it would be fixed in 2 days.
I almost paid $50 to get someone to do this for me. Any chance you can integrate a time delay so that the email isn’t instant, and looks more natural?
Allison
April 8th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
12Looks interesting. I’m leaving a comment to check your comment relish out. Seems like a great idea. Thanks!
Justin
April 9th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
13Allison,
I currently have it uninstalled as I am in the process of redesigning the site. Thanks though! Check it out for yourself, its a simple plugin to install, configure and get to using!
Seth W
April 10th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
14Look’s awesome. I have not used version 1 but will definitely start picking it up now that it has some bugs fixed. Seems like a very useful tool!
Pande
April 11th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
15If I use the plugin I get a blank page on wp-comments-post.php when I make a comment if I’m logged in; I don’t receive the test mail and when I comment with a new mail neither receive the “thank you message” I prepare…
I’m a mess..
Maybe I’m not compatible.
Thanks Jason..
Darran
April 12th, 2009 at 6:39 am
16Thank you for this plugin, did a small test for it and it was working well. It hasn’t actually emailed a new reader to the blog though.
I did a quick search on the plugin repository, and I couldn’t find it. Maybe you should add it there, so that whenever there is a new update, we would easily be informed and then we can submit an update.
Dave
April 13th, 2009 at 11:56 am
17Hi,
Just installed 2.0. Can’t seem to get it to work. I have Cimy Swift SMTP activated as my WP was not sending out any mail. With SMTP it is, Just not getting anything with Comment Relish.
I’ve tried the test email and not got a thing.
Any ideas? Do I have to change the plugin to send via smtp rather than php?
Chint
April 13th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
18Hello
This is a great tool want to get installed on my blog but when I fill out all details and try to send a test e-mail to myself it fails, checked spam not in there either. But the plugin says it sent it successfully?
Any ideas?
Alex Stewart
April 14th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
19Thanks for such a great plugin! Very useful!
-Alex Stewart
Ziven.Pan
April 15th, 2009 at 7:40 am
20mail not show Chinese
Grace Smith
April 15th, 2009 at 8:30 am
21Haven’t used this plugin before but wanted to try it out however i just get this message when i try to edit the settings:
Cannot load wpcomment-relish.php.
Im on Dreamhost, could it be the cause of this?
Thanks :-)
Sarah
April 15th, 2009 at 8:51 am
22I think this plugin is a great idea. I’m trying to set it up and have not been able to get the test email to work. Any suggestions?
kgagne
April 16th, 2009 at 11:46 am
23I’m commenting so that I will get an automatic response and can see what this relish does. :-)
Dave
April 17th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
24So, it looks like there’s lots problems with the plugin then
Henrik Flensborg
April 18th, 2009 at 7:43 am
25I’m getting an error just like Grace Smith when I click Settings:
Cannot load wpcomment-relish.php.
Chint
April 18th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
26I dont think this plugin works, didnt get a mail from this comment board or cant get test/plugin to work! hmmm I smells a fishy =)
Tommy Brunn
April 29th, 2009 at 4:37 am
27I just implemented your plugin on my site, and I absolutely love it! Thank you so much!
Heather
April 29th, 2009 at 8:01 am
28Works like a charm on both blogs, test worked brilliantly :) genius! Many thanks for your time and trouble.
Lorraine
April 29th, 2009 at 8:01 am
29Unfortunately, I’m having the same problem as Grace- when I try to go into Settings, I get “Cannot load wpcomment-relish.php.”
Great Engineering
April 29th, 2009 at 8:09 am
30I works really well.
However, it would be nice to have the possibility to add the url of the blog with a link to it (not only the post url)
Mette
April 29th, 2009 at 10:35 am
31I also want to see what is does :-)
Trucker Steve
April 29th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
32This is great, thanks for taking your time to make it!
Rachel
April 30th, 2009 at 2:16 am
33Silly question – does the email get sent out when the comment is approved (if this has to be done manually) or when the comment is placed? I’m assuming the former, but I’m not sure.
Justin
May 1st, 2009 at 8:41 am
34@Rachel: Email sends upon approval.
To everyone else who has “submitted a comment” to test the plugin, it takes me weeks to go through and sort all the comments and trackbacks to my site, so I apologize, but you likely will not get one.
In terms of people complaining about bugs, could you paste your error.log or email it to me using the form on the site so that I can see whats up, you might have renamed the folder, or didn’t upload the folder correctly. Just uploaded the plugin to four sites all activated, all work.. so let’s see those logs!
Gene De Libero
May 3rd, 2009 at 7:52 pm
35Great idea, Justin. Thanks for the time and effort.
Ian Cremona
May 7th, 2009 at 8:56 am
36Thanks!
shecky
May 7th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
37Simple but great plugin!
Thanks Justin.
Casper M
May 9th, 2009 at 4:18 am
38Nice plugin, thanks!
PTreats
May 10th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
39I’m having the same problem as Grace.
Error Logs:
[Sun May 10 21:11:07 2009] [error] [client 68.7.251.179] File does not exist: /home/paleo7/public_html/404.shtml
[Sun May 10 21:11:07 2009] [error] [client 68.7.251.179] File does not exist: /home/paleo7/public_html/wp-content/plugins/dynamic-headers/header-images/None
[Sun May 10 20:25:58 2009] [error] [client 68.7.251.179] File does not exist: /home/paleo7/public_html/404.shtml
[Sun May 10 20:25:58 2009] [error] [client 68.7.251.179] File does not exist: /home/paleo7/public_html/favicon.ico
[Sun May 10 20:25:55 2009] [error] [client 68.7.251.179] File does not exist: /home/paleo7/public_html/404.shtml
[Sun May 10 20:25:55 2009] [error] [client 68.7.251.179] File does not exist: /home/paleo7/public_html/favicon.ico
Deep
May 11th, 2009 at 4:20 am
40Nice plugin but just wondering why it’s still not on Wordpress’s official plugin directory?
Jennifer
May 11th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
41@Grace and Henrik, I was receiving the same error, but was able to fix it.
The link inside the plugin page appears to be different than the link that appears on the left side.
Underneath the “settings” tab on the left you will find another link for Comment Relish, which takes you to a valid page. I have just sent myself a test email and am awaiting it’s arrival.
tsquez
May 18th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
42awesome plugin. Thank you. I have downloaded it and now I am going to be installing it. Once again thank you
Craig
June 8th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
43Same problem…
Unfortunately, I’m having the same problem as Grace- when I try to go into Settings, I get “Cannot load wpcomment-relish.php.”
Kenn
June 14th, 2009 at 9:02 am
44Hi, great idea. However, there are a couple issues with Comment Relish 2.0:
* Short PHP tags should never be used in distributed code, as you can’t be sure your users’ servers have them enabled. (four instances, in the admin form)
* You’ve hard-coded a path to cr.js, which won’t necessarily be correct if your users’ have installed their plugins somewhere else. Details: http://codex.wordpress.org/Determining_Plugin_and_Content_Directories (line 23, in cr_add_script())
I’ll also second the comment about putting this in the WP plugin repository. It will make distributing your updates much easier.
Thanks!
Kevin
June 15th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
45I’m getting the following error on Dreamhost PS after activating the plugin and trying to access the settings:
Cannot load wpcomment-relish.php.
Any ideas?
Kevin
June 15th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
46Jennifer you were correct, the “settings” link in the plugin page doesn’t work. The “Commnent Relish” link under my blog’s “Settings” tab does. Thanks!
Justin:
Did you get that? BTW, awesome plugin. Thank you!
brian meagher
June 17th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
47Same problem as Grace and PTreats.
Author has not responded here since May 01, it’s June 17th!
Author is still running WP2.7 here. Hmmm 2.7.1 came and went and we’re at 2.8 on WP.
Too bad. Looked like a great plugin when it worked.
Brendan Wenzel
June 21st, 2009 at 3:42 pm
48Hi Justin, I have upgraded to Wordpress 2.8 and having trouble with the activation of this plugin. I really really want to use, but don’t know what to do. Can you help me this?
kurtlar vadisi pusu
June 25th, 2009 at 9:04 am
49great plugin , thank you :)
Jessi
June 28th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
50I was referred to your page via Glen’s PluginID ebook, and I have to admit, this is just the plugin I am looking for in order to get more interactive with my visitors (especially since my site is in its infancy and in a serious niche).
So thanks for developing it and making it available to us bloggers!
greatblogtoprofit.com
July 6th, 2009 at 8:17 am
51thank … I have installed according to instructions but still not active comment relish
S
July 17th, 2009 at 4:21 am
52looks like a nice plugin i might try it. I’ve been hearing a lot about it. Good and bad, but I think it will be worth the try. I don’t think it’s comment spam, that’s just too far. I just think readers do appreciate knowing their comment was posted.
Sheena
July 21st, 2009 at 9:43 am
53I’ve just downloaded this plugin and installed it, but once I tried to go in and activate it, I received a message saying that there was no active header for the plugin. Anyone know how to fix that?
San Francisco Photos
July 25th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
54Hi this sounds like a great plugin and I’ve installed it. I sent several test comments and it does not seem to be working for me. Any reason why? I have wordpress 2.8. Does this now work with wordpress 2.8? Any advice would be helpful. Thanks!
SJ
ken
August 20th, 2009 at 9:46 am
55Installed the plugin and received a message telling me I did not have enough permissions. This was on the plugin settings.
Please advise
Ken
Bogcess
August 25th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
56Downloaded the plugin. I’ll install it later. Thanks!
robinleo
August 26th, 2009 at 5:37 am
57Does it require any permission?
Mike
August 27th, 2009 at 6:12 am
58Read about this plugin on Yoast site. I plan to download it immediately and check it out. I’ll come back with an update about it.
Pere
August 27th, 2009 at 9:56 am
59Hello! This plugin looks interesting. i just installed but when I go to setting page it says that I don’t have permissions. To which file I should give extra permissions in my server? Should I give 777 or 744 is enough? Thanks!
Mitrich
August 31st, 2009 at 5:21 am
60Same error: You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.
It show when I click “Settings” link for plugin
Gouri
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:22 am
61Why is this plugin not showing in the wordpress.org plugins list? Is it compatible with wordpress 2.8.4?
john
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:38 am
62I have the same permission problems here.
ZXT
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:37 am
63I got an error activating it….The plugin does not have a valid header.
Is this compatible with WP 2.8.4?
ZXT
September 11th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
64Downloading…is this compatible with WP 2.8.4 already?
Beatrice
September 13th, 2009 at 5:04 am
65Hi, thanks for the plugin,its worked on my site pretty good..
matt
September 13th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
66plugin works great for me! I was about to make one, then I found yours. You used many more hooks then I was going to use… Good job
Teungku
September 19th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
67great plugin bro, i was instaling it, thank’s any way,..
Jhazzi
September 26th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
68Like others, a problem with install. “No header” error.
Your plugin is being recommended highly but that recommendation means nothing without minimal support.
The plugin is free, thank you very much but a donation isn’t out of the question along with future recommendation from new users IF the plugin works!
I’m uninstalling it for this reason.
Rachel
September 29th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
69Hi! I followed the instructions but at first it said there’s no header and then I tried it again and it said that it already exists but I can’t find the plug-in ANYWHERE in my Wordpress account. Any thoughts?
Iwantitfixed
September 30th, 2009 at 5:02 am
70I have the same problem: you do not have permission. There are 4 other people who are experiencing the same problems, so Justin… do you ever read these comments at all!?
We want this fixed, period. How do we fix it?
Ana Aceves
October 4th, 2009 at 12:56 am
71I am also getting the message:
You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.
Dmitriy
October 5th, 2009 at 5:20 am
72thank … I’ll install it later.
emko
October 21st, 2009 at 1:12 am
73this plugin is useful i like wordpress and good programmer thansk for everything
dimaks
October 24th, 2009 at 3:38 am
74I downloaded this plugin and will try to install it tonight. thanks for this awesome tool!
fm100
November 6th, 2009 at 11:17 am
75thx and for a first-reply test^^
Mohammed
November 9th, 2009 at 4:49 am
76Hi,
I installed the plugin but when I activated, it said:
>>> The plugin does not have a valid header.
And it is not showing in the dashboard!
Torgeir Ølnes
November 10th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
77Great plugin, but I have stumbled upon a strange problem. When I use special letters like “æ”, “ø” and “å”, it all works fine when I try to send the test-mail. But the mail people recieve when they comment for the first time, has some symbols instead (Å=Ã¥ and Ø=Ø). Why would there be a diffrance between the test-mail and the actual mail?
Thanks for a good plugin.
Regards
Torgeir Ølnes
Litwin constraction
November 12th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
78Hello! thanks for good plugin! Read about this plugin on Yoast site.
Terri Ann
November 18th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
79Wonderful plugin, do you have any plans to add it to the WP.org plugin directory so it can be auto installed from the WP interface? I’ve used it on many of my blogs and it would be handy to be able to add it without opening my FTP program.
Cheers!
Jon
November 24th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
80this is awesome! Jon
ivan
November 25th, 2009 at 6:40 am
81Settings are made, the test-emailo is fine, but the checkbox isn’t in the blog ???
Why don’t you use your own plug in here?
katrin
December 3rd, 2009 at 10:06 am
82Thank you! It’s great!
But there is some problem – when I try to compose message, it doesn’t insert special code (Author’s Name, RSS feed. etc..)
How to fix this?
Jon Chase
December 6th, 2009 at 9:37 am
83AWESOME plugin! I’ve been looking for an easy way to follow up with new visitors. This is PERFECT.
Owen McGab Enaohwo
December 22nd, 2009 at 10:53 am
84I use a Comment Management tool call Disqus, I am wondering if it will be okay to still use your plugin to send out a thank you note whenever someone makes a comment to my blog? What are you thoughts on this?
ilikerobots
December 25th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
85thanks for this, will see how it works. hope you have it turned on now!
alana
December 26th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
86interesting.
Caleb Williams
December 27th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
87Looks like this error needs a hardcoding change.
Find:
$settings_link = ‘Settings‘;
Replace with:
$settings_link = ‘Settings‘;
That made it work for me.
phani
December 28th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
88thanks for the plugin.
I made some modifications to this plug-in,
I added Email Subscription to the plug-in so that users will get an url where they can directly click on it to subscribe our blog through Email instead of RSS Feed.
JCarson
December 30th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
89I’m going to see if our management wants to give this a try on our blog! Thanks!
Jon
January 7th, 2010 at 12:19 am
90Hey, this looks like a great plugin. Thanks for putting this out.
Felix
January 11th, 2010 at 12:05 am
91Great plugin that should make my blog more friendly to commenters!
Christy B.
January 11th, 2010 at 1:02 am
92Thank you for all your work. When I install the plu-in my WP site says it cannot find the header. What do I do about that? Thank you!
Laurie
January 11th, 2010 at 11:26 am
93I’ve read both pros and cons about your plugin, but think I might try it. Do you think it would work well on my site?
Thanks!
Denis Antunez
January 15th, 2010 at 3:59 am
94Does the plugin work with Disqus comments too?. I would apreciate your answer.
Thanks.
Voyage Montreal
January 17th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
95Thank you for the plugin
Tommy Wishman
January 29th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
96Hi Guys!
Sounds like a great plugin. Unfortunately it isn’t working on my blog. Problems with wordpress 2.9.1?? not working?
bye Tommy
Andy Pols
January 29th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
97Just like to say thanks for comment relish – I’ve recently installed it and it’s prompted lots of correspondence from people posting to my site.
An excellent tool
RBBali
January 30th, 2010 at 12:51 am
98nice plugin keeps to communicate
Hashim Warren
February 2nd, 2010 at 10:40 am
99Excellent plugin idea!
I was looking for a way to engage my new readers. I was actually thinking of turning off comments and only using a contact form at the end of my posts.
I’m going to consider how I can use this plugin to jumpstart my relationship with new readers.
Guru Sanket Biswal
February 7th, 2010 at 10:18 am
100The download link shows a 404 error. Plz fix it so that we can download.
Antonio Gomez
February 8th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
101Was the plugin removed? Wanted to give it a try. =(
Dodi Iswandi Mauliawan
February 16th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
102your link didn’t work :(
lektire
February 17th, 2010 at 12:50 am
103download link is broken, plzz fix it bro :)
Matthew Big Red Tomato Company
February 24th, 2010 at 8:29 am
104Hi, the link is saying not available on this server.
http://www.justinshattuck.com/bin/plugins/wpcomment-relish.zip
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