Notify commenter when they have submitted a comment

Hi Anja,

Thanks for the feedback. Actually, when a user submits a comment that requires moderation, CommentBox already displays the comment immediately after submission with an “Unpublished” status label, so the user can see that the comment was received.

Have you noticed this behavior on the Joomla Community Magazine website, or is there a case where the comment does not appear after submission?

That being said, maybe the “Unpublished” label is not clear enough for regular visitors, since it is more of a Joomla/admin term. Perhaps something like “Awaiting moderation” would make it more obvious that the comment was submitted successfully and is waiting for review.

What do you think? Do you feel changing the wording would solve the confusion, or do you think an additional confirmation message would still be useful?

Thanks again for sharing this feedback. It is really helpful to see how CommentBox behaves on a site with an active community.

Hi Anja,

Thanks for the clarification. That makes sense. I agree that the label can easily be missed, especially since it is only visible immediately after submitting the comment.

Adding an extra confirmation step/message after submitting a comment sounds like a good improvement, as it would make the moderation workflow much clearer for visitors.

What do you think would work better from your experience with the Joomla Community Magazine users:

• A confirmation message displayed on the page after submitting the comment (for example: “Your comment has been submitted successfully and is awaiting moderation.”)
• Or an email notification sent to the commenter confirming that their comment was received?

An email notification may actually be a better fit here, since it would not require any changes to the site layout/design and the message can contain more details about the moderation process. On the other hand, an on-page message gives more immediate feedback right after submitting the comment.

I would be interested to hear which approach you think would be more helpful based on the feedback you received from your users.

Thanks again for helping us improve these details!

That makes sense, especially the point that the user can always go back to the email later and has a confirmation that their comment was received and will be reviewed.

We will start with the email notification for the commenter, since this should solve the main issue and provide reassurance that the comment was not lost.

I will probably add this as an optional setting, so each site owner can decide if they want commenters to receive these emails.

We will also keep the improved on-page confirmation message in mind, but I agree that the email notification is the most useful part to start with.

Hi Anja,

Just a quick update: we have released CommentBox 1.4.0, which includes this feature.

You can now enable an optional email notification that is sent to commenters after they submit a comment. This lets them know that their comment was received and is awaiting moderation, giving them reassurance that it wasn’t lost and that someone will review it.

Thanks again for the suggestion and for helping us identify this usability improvement based on the Joomla Community Magazine workflow.

You’re welcome! 🙂

I’m glad we could improve the moderation workflow. If you have any other ideas or feedback from the Joomla Community Magazine, don’t hesitate to let us know.

Have a great day!