Notification Emails Not Send After Comment Approval in WordPress 2.5 and 2.5.1

In WordPress 2.5 and WordPress 2.5.1, when the option is set to email post author whenever a comment is posted (comments_notify = 1), no notification email is generated or sent to notify the post author if the comment is held in moderation queue and is only approved later via edit-comments.php.

Prior to WordPress 2.5, an email is sent on approval to post author even if a comment is required to be approved and not posted instantly. However, notification that a comment is held for moderation and require administrator’s action to approve, delete or spam the message is working properly, with email sends to administrator’s email address (admin_email), not post author.

It’s a bug that has been introduced in WordPress 2.5, and slips into WordPress 2.5.1 when moderation.php functionality was moved into edit-comments.php. The bug will probably be fixed in WordPress 2.5.2 release. If you can’t wait, simply edit wp-includes/comment.php on WordPress blog directory on web server, and add the following lines of code:

Before:

break;
case 'approve':
$query = $wpdb->prepare("UPDATE $wpdb->comments SET comment_approved='1' WHERE comment_ID = %d LIMIT 1", $comment_id);
break;
case 'spam':
$query = $wpdb->prepare("UPDATE $wpdb->comments SET comment_approved='spam' WHERE comment_ID = %d LIMIT 1", $comment_id);


After:

break;
case 'approve':
$query = $wpdb->prepare("UPDATE $wpdb->comments SET comment_approved='1' WHERE comment_ID = %d LIMIT 1", $comment_id);
if ( get_option( 'comments_notify' ) == true ) {
wp_notify_postauthor( $comment );
}
break;
case 'spam':
$query = $wpdb->prepare("UPDATE $wpdb->comments SET comment_approved='spam' WHERE comment_ID = %d LIMIT 1", $comment_id);