Notifications and Activity

The plugin can tell people when something happens to a review: by email, by a BuddyPress notification, and with an entry in the activity stream. You can switch each one on or off separately on WB Plugins > Member Reviews > General.

Who gets told what

Event	Reviewed member	You (the site administrator)
A review is published at once (Auto Approve on)	Email and BuddyPress notification	Nothing
A review needs approval (Auto Approve off)	Nothing yet	Email, and a BuddyPress notification for the first administrator account
You approve a pending review	Email and BuddyPress notification	Nothing
You dismiss the reports on a review that reports had hidden	Nothing. The review comes back quietly.	Nothing
Someone reports a review	Nothing	BuddyPress notification for the first administrator account. It does not name who reported.
The member replies to a review	Nothing. The reviewer (the member who wrote the review) gets a BuddyPress notification.	Nothing

The switches

Setting	What it controls
Email Notifications	The email to the reviewed member, and the “needs approval” email to you.
BuddyPress Notifications	The notification bubble the reviewed member sees in BuddyPress, plus the report notification to you and the reply notification to the reviewer.
Activity Stream	Whether a published review is announced in the site-wide activity stream. Off by default.

Both notification switches are on by default. The BuddyPress notification to the administrator for a pending review is sent only while Email Notifications is on.

The emails

The emails sent to the reviewed member and to you each have a subject and a message you can edit on the General tab. The boxes come pre-filled with friendly text.

Field	Sent to	Placeholders you can use
Email Subject and Email Message	The member who got the review	Subject: [site-name]. Message: [user-name], [reviewer-name], [review-link], [site-name]
Approval Email Subject and Approval Email Message	The site administrator email (set in Settings > General)	Subject: [site-name]. Message: [site-admin], [review-aproval-link], [site-name]

Notes:

• Placeholders are replaced when the email is sent. Type them exactly as shown. The approval link placeholder really is spelled [review-aproval-link] (one “p”).
• The two approval fields only appear while Auto Approve Reviews is off.
• Emails are sent as formatted text, so line breaks and basic formatting in the message box are kept.
• For an anonymous review, [reviewer-name] becomes “An anonymous user”.

Step by step: Control review emails and notifications.

The activity stream

When Activity Stream is on, each published review adds one line to the BuddyPress activity stream, such as “Alex posted a new review to Sam”, with the review text and star ratings.

• Anonymous reviews show “An anonymous user” with a plain default picture, and the name does not link to a profile.
• Editing or re-approving a review updates its existing entry. It does not post a duplicate.
• A review that is hidden, unpublished, trashed or deleted is removed from the stream. If it is published again, a fresh entry is created.