In this article, you will be able to find out how the “Notifications” feature from Thrive Comments works and how you can properly set it up.
First of all, in order to start using the feature, you will need to access Thrive Comments from the Thrive Dashboard:
On the new page that opens, click on “Notifications”:
Connect to an Email Delivery Service
In order to be able to send notification emails, you will need to set up an API Connection with an email delivery service. To start doing that, click on “Add new”:
This will send you to the API Connection list of your Thrive Dashboard, where all your active API connections will be displayed.
What you need to do is click on the “Add new Connection” item:
Then, select an app from the drop-down list:
Important!
In order to be able to activate the Thrive Comments notifications, you will need to use an email delivery system.
Here are two articles that you might find useful if you want to learn more about email delivery services and how to set them up:
- What Are Email Delivery Services For? (Asset Delivery Feature)
- List of Current API Connections Supported
You will next have to follow some additional steps for setting up the connection, depending on the service you choose here. We have separate tutorials that cover the process for each of the available apps, which you can find linked here.
After the connection has been set up, it will appear in the Thrive Comments “Notifications” section. Also, it can always be turned off / on by using the available toggle:
Keep in mind though that in order for your users to be notified, the connection has to be active.
Set up the Notifications
With this feature you can set up two types of notifications:
- Comment Notification: when users will leave a comment, they will be notified via email when someone replies to their comment.
- Post Notification: if this option is selected, the user will receive email notifications whenever a new comment/reply is added to that particular post
Customize Comment Notification
This feature works like this: any visitor that has posted a comment on your website will be notified via email when someone will reply to his comment (as long as that user has provided a valid email address to which the notification can be sent).
The feature comes with a predefined email notification that will be sent to the user. However, you can change this and type in your own text.
You can set up the email notification the way you see fit, by hovering over the “Customize Comment Notification” card and clicking on the pencil icon:
This will open a separate window, that will allow you to customize your email notification:
We’ll start with the right-hand side, where your notification shortcodes will be placed.
The notification shortcodes are dynamic elements: for example, {source_page} means “The title of the post or page that the comment was made on”:
To see what each of the shortcodes stand for, simply hover over the “i” icon to find out. However, you can find them here, as well:
- {comment_start} – The first 10 words of the main comment. (e.g. “This post is great!”)
- {source_page} – The title of the post or page that the comment was made on. (e.g. “5 Reasons Why Thrive Themes is the Best”)
- {site_title} – The site’s title, taken from the WordPress settings (e.g. “Thrive Themes”)
- {comment_author} – The name of the person who receives the notification
- {source_commenter_name} – The name of the person who wrote the reply or the new comment
- {unsubscribe_link} – The text that the user sets up in the “Unsubscribe link text” field – this link will allow the user to unsubscribe from receiving email notifications:
To edit the “Unsubscribe link text”, simply click on the pencil icon and start typing:
Moving on to the main section of the window, here’s what you can customize:
Email Subject
Here you can set up what will show up in the email subject of the person who wrote the main comment:
The same as before, all you need to do in order to modify the email subject is to hover over the field, click on the pencil icon that shows up, and start typing.
Email Content
This part consists of the main content that is found in the notification email:
For the “Email Content”, as well, you can change the text, if you want, as seen in this image:
Below, you will see an example of the reply that has been posted to the main comment:
The “Reply to” text can be changed, as well.
On the front end, when this button will be clicked, it will send the person that has received the email directly to the reply comment on the post/page that it is displayed on.
Moving forward, you will come across an example of the main comment to which the person has received a reply:
The text above the comment example can be modified as well by clicking on the pencil icon that appears when you hover over it:
This lets the original comment author know that someone has replied to his comment. This is how it looks in an actual email:
The last part of the notification will let the users know that they were signed up to be notified of replies to their comments. Also, they are given the opportunity to unsubscribe from the notifications.
These sections can be modified as well, by using the pencil icons found on the right-hand side.
If you want to revert the changes you have made in the “Customize Notification” window, you can always select the “Click Here to Revert” button:
Don’t forget to “Save” everything before returning to the dashboard:
Customize Post Notification
The second notification message you can customize in this section is the “Customize Post Notification” one:
First of all, in order for the users to receive this type of notification, they will need to be subscribed to a certain post/page.
This can be easily done simply by scrolling down on the commenting section of that post/page, and then click on “Subscribe to comments”:
In this way, whenever anyone submits a new comment on this specific post/page, the user that has subscribed will receive an email notification with the newly posted comment.
The same as before, you can customize the email notification. This time, access the “Customize Post Notification” option by clicking on the pencil icon:
Then, this will open a separate pop-up, like the one described before:
The features found in this window are identical to the ones already described in the “Customize Comment Notification” section.
When you are done customizing everything, don’t forget to click on “Save” before exiting this window:
These are the basic steps for setting up the Thrive Comments “Notifications” feature.
If you need more information about the way Thrive Comments works, you can check out this section of our knowledge base.
Hope you found this article useful!