Subscribe to Comments 2.1
Subscribe to Comments 2.1 is a plugin that allows commenters on your blog to check a box before commenting and get e-mail notification of further comments. It is one of the most popular WordPress plugins out there for the simple reason that it helps foster a community around your blog by encouraging commenters to come back and stay engaged in the dialog.
Features
- Rudimentary security
- Users cannot enter a random e-mail into the subscription manager and modify someone else’s subscriptions
- In order to modify subscriptions, users need to use a special link, given in notification e-mails, and printed in the comments form as long as they have their comment cookie
- Recognition of subscription status
- Unsubscribed users see the “subscribe to comments” checkbox, but subscribed users see a “Manage your subscriptions” link
- The author of the post is recognized by either login or comment cookie and is assumed to be subscribed to the entry (as they will receive notifications through WordPress)
- Themeable subscription manager
- Uses visual style of WordPress interface
- Can be optionally accessed via “Manage” menu in WordPress
- E-mail verification of block requests
- Javascript “invert selection” link to check/uncheck subscriptions for mass deletion
- “Return to the page you were viewing” link that persists at the top of the page, so that users can easily return to the post they were reading once they are done modifying subscriptions
- Ability to let users change notification e-mail address
- In the subscription manager, users can request that their notification address be changed for all their subscriptions
- Special link is sent to the old address for verification
- Once clicked, their e-mail address will be changed instantly for all their comments
- Easy integration into comments form
- No modification of comments form needed for WP 1.5+ (supported themes)
- For users who want custom placement of the checkbox/link to subscription manager, this can be done with one simple function call, placed anywhere in the comment form
- Subscription without leaving a comment
- By popular demand, you can now offer visitors the option of subscribing to comments on an entry without having to leave a comment themselves
- If the reader later decides to join the conversation, their subscription continues without them having to explicitly set it
- Customization
- You can make the Subscription Manager that your users see use your theme’s header, footer and sidebar, using CSS to style it to fit your site
- Internationalization
- I’ve written Subscribe to Comments 2.1 with i18n in mind, making full use of
__()and_e()functions. The domain is “subscribe-to-comments”.
- I’ve written Subscribe to Comments 2.1 with i18n in mind, making full use of
Download
Version 2.1 Update
Version 2.1 of Subscribe to Comments has a feature that people have been begging me to implement for many months: you can view the list of people who are subscribed to posts on your blog, and you can also see a list of the most “subscribed” posts. Also in this version is a new one-file install. You just put subscribe-to-comments.php in your /plugins/ directory, activate, and you’re done. This version will work on WordPress versions from 2.0.6 through 2.3.1 (highest tested).
Versions
- 2.1.2 Fixed a few bugs that’d send bad notifications (thanks Donncha!), cleaned up some code and moved to using proper WP escaping functions
- 2.1.1 WordPress 2.2 compatibility! Also note that support for
attribute_escape()is needed, so if you get errors about that, upgrade to the latest version in your branch - 2.1 big update, fixing a few potential XSS holes, and misc error messages… see above for details
- 2.0.8 XSS security fixes, hopefully fixed “+” symbols in e-mail for good
- 2.0.7 additional “funky e-mail” fixes
- 2.0.6 support for e-mail addresses with “+” symbols, option to disable CSS “clearing”
- 2.0.4 potential security bugs, better WP 2.0 capabilities compat
Feedback/Bugs
Feel free to leave bug reports or feature requests here. Use this entry’s comments to ask support questions or offer general feedback
I’ve spent a lot of time writing this code and supporting it. If you derive some benefit from this code, please consider showing your gratitute in a more tangible
way. Thanks!
I have received $30.00 this month for my coding efforts.
hi, my name is jakob.
What is software escrow?
archy it i, and i like you
It seems like a great plugin but as previous commenters, I run into problems with Spam Karma.
I don’t how to combine the two and customize it in such a way that the user experience is still ok.
I’ll wait till the next version that maybe addresses this. Can also be that I just don’t know how to do it as I am pretty much a noob.
Thanks.
G.
Mark, I have a problem where people on my site post legitimate comments but don’t provide a valid email address (either because they don’t wish to share, or because they don’t have one) - since my “subscribe to comments” checkbox is ticked by default if they miss unchecking this then I have a load of subscriptions to posts in the form of none@none.com or none@idonthaveone.com etc…
Hence, I tried to install your wp-subscriptions-viewer.php file. This would help me weed out the “dud” emails myself if I checked the list for anyhting obviously non-valid regularly.
Anyway, I tried to activate this in the plugins list on my site - it was not listed. I tried to point my browser at the php file directly and got:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: get_currentuserinfo() in /web/sites…etc… wp-content/plugins/wp-subscriptions-viewer.php on line 4
Any help here?
(I know you’re probably mega busy and hate getting strangers to beg for new features when you’ve already been so great at writing the plugin in the first place :))
Agh! No matter - I just found out that putting wp-subscriptions-viewer.php into the root directory of the site (domain.com/wp-subscriptions-viewer.php) makes it work fine.
Hi Mark,
somehow, your plugin did not work with my website, and I wonder why.
I installed it, logged out, wrote a comment with a different eMail-address, subscribed and approved the comment as admin afterwards.
But I never received a subscription notice to the different eMail address nor would I see any subscribed eMail in the subscription manager.
Does one have to be a registered user to subscribe?
I would appreciate your help! Although I checked “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” here, I guess it would be best if you could write a short e-mail to me…
Thank you very much!
Best wishes
Marco
Hi again,
I am so sorry, it seemed to be my mistake… guess I was still logged in as administrator while trying to test the plugin… I tried again and THIS time I made sure that I was NOT logged in… and see: things worked fine!
What happens if someone deletes his cookie? Then he will not be informed that he is a subscriber. What happens if he does not subscribe again? Will he stay a subscriber as long as he unsubscribes via subscription manager?
How can I add these nice “Welcome back…” and “Because you have commented here before…”? Makes things a lot easier… Or are they integrated into the plugin by default? Didn’t have time to check it out yet…
Thanks a lot once again and best wishes!
Marco
Hi,
I wonder how I can show the pingbacks as you do between the comments. I’d like to implement something like that on my website. How does this work? Do I need a wordpress plugin? Remember that I am a newbie to php…
A reply would be great, thank you!
Best wishes!
Marco
I got this error message when I activate the plugin.
WordPress database error: [Access denied for user 'my user'@'localhost' to database 'blog']
ALTER TABLE wp_comments ADD COLUMN comment_subscribe enum(’Y',’N') NOT NULL default ‘N’
….
How can I fix this?
Wow, what a nice plugin! No problems yet (using WP 2.0.4.), very easy install and it works like a charm. Sweet! Thanks for sharing!
I’m getting an odd bug on my site. People can subscribe but they cannot manage their subscriptions. This is the error page that comes up after it asks for your email address:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: is_do_not_mail() in /home/.fizzie/mikelacroix/gluemeat.com/wp-subscription-manager.php on line 50
Any ideas? Many thanks…!!
Hi Mark,
your plugin is great but now I saw that there is lots of white space in my comment form, caused by the .subcribe-to-comments class. Visitors need to scroll down my page to find the checkbox and the comment submit button. I don’t know how to fix it; I already tried a lot of code position changes, it didn’t help
Can you help??
Awesome plug-in thanks you it works perfect on my site!
Please what plug-in did you use to get speller pages to integrate with your comments form? I need this bad for my sites.
Excellent plugin, thanks!
Excellent job–thanks! Now, if I can just get every blog I read to add it…
Will be good to see some support for Brian’s Threaded Comments in next version.
Users might want to recieve just replies to their own comments, not the others. Like LiveJournal.
I just installed this plugin, and I’m really excited in getting it to work. Problem: I can’t seem to change the FROM field of the email address that is sent out to people, no matter how hard I try. I’ve changed the ADMIN account email,and I’ve tried changing the email address field at Options menu. Currently, the notification is using my private email, and if I can’t change this, this plugin will be useless to me. Please help. Thanks. - REF
Continuation of the previous email. Is the From field determined by the email settings on your server?
Installed and running without a hitch on Wordpress 2.0.4 at wecan.be - thanks!!
ReflectiveSAM,
You need to set the e-mail address in Options » Subscribe to Comments. It is initially set to your WP Admin address, but you can change it.
You are the MAN!!!! It’s working great, now! One last question, when you say in the read me:
5. Optional: If you would like to enable users to subscribe to comments without having to leave a comment, place this somewhere in your template, but make sure it is outside the comments form. A good place would be right after the ending tag for the comments form:
Which file would you place this code inside? Where in WP would you do this, or is it a file on the server? Thanks.
ReflectiveSAM,
You’d place is in your theme’s comments.php file (
wp-content/themes/YOURTHEME/comments.php).Place it after this part:
</form>Thanks, Mark. I’ve donated a bit to your cause. Keep up the great work! - REF
After reading through the comments on this plugin, i think i have a easy question: the “subscribe” box and the text “notify me….” are wonky. If you goto http://www.mytimewithgod.net and click on any post, then scroll down to the “comments section you will see what i am talking about. How do i “align the text and the subscribe box? Thanks for any help
Chris,
In 2.0.6, turn off the CSS clear. Failing that, use the CSS classes to mess with it.
Ok, i was using 2.04 and upgraded to 2.06. Now it is worse than before. The checkbox is right next to the “submit” button. So, i unchecked “do a css clear” and nothing changed. Where do i modify the CSS classes (not a css guru). Thanks again
Look at the source of the page and use the class of the paragraph around the input. You may be to do a manual line break before it. Different themes use different markup, so you’ll have to just fiddle.
Hello Mark!
Nice plugin.
I just have sent you the letter with information about several vulnerabilities in Subscribe To
Comments 2.0.4 plugin which I found.
The CSS vulnerabilities found have been fixed and a new version will be released tonight.
Hi,
I think I’ve found a bug…
Line 17 of wp-subscription-manager.php should read:
$sg_subscribe->form_action = ‘edit.php?page=subscribe-to-comments/subscribe-to-comments.php’;
not
$sg_subscribe->form_action = ‘edit.php?page=subscribe-to-comments.php’;
At least, after making that change, the form on admin->manage->subscriptions started working!
Regards,
Rob…
Rob,
That’s just because you installed it in a subdirectory. But you’re right that it’s a bug… it should work regardless of what subdirectory the file is in (or if you rename the file). I’ll try to get that into tonight’s update.
Thanks Mark.
Didn’t occur to me not to put it in a sub-directory, as it had multiple files in the zip file
Regards,
Rob…
Rob,
You only need to put the
subscribe-to-comments.phpfile in the/plugins/directory. Thewp-subscription-manager.phpfile goes in your root WP directory, and the other ones (readme files,.potfile) don’t need to be uploaded at all. Eventually (for version 2.1), it’ll be in one file, and I’ll put the extra stuff in a subfolder so it’s less confusing.