For a while now, I have been using a plugin called Subscribe to Comments that allows people to receive email notifications of replies they receive to the comments they leave here. This post is a mea culpa to those folks expecting them. As an administrator, I don’t sign up to be notified of comments because I usually respond to them via a Jetpack app or directly in my dashboard for the site. At one point in time when I first started using the plugin, I think I tested it initially, found it to be working, and well, that was that. Set it and forget it right? That was a wrong assumption on my part.
Part of what hides something wrong is also the aspect of other WordPress users and possibly Jetpack app users leaving a like or some acknowledgment of a reply. But for others, unless there is a follow-up comment, acknowledgment, or reply, you might assume there was just no reply in a discussion. That, of course, assumes a visitor knew there was something to reply to. That can also lead to a misunderstanding of “hey – he didn’t reply to my comment after I took time to comment! Grrrrrr!” I do reply to a lot of comments, but that doesn’t do much good if the email notification a visitor is relying upon isn’t working.
First I had to stumble upon the issue, which turns out the rejections of the emails weren’t sent to my primary email address, but the default system address for where my site is hosted. Well, I don’t use or check that email inbox except on rare occasions. My bad again. It was only recently I happened to look and found all sorts of rejected emails from inboxes of people expecting a reply to their comments. And even if I did reply, they wouldn’t know unless they made a return visit to that particular post.
That took me down the rabbit hole of email verification systems, email delivery testing sites like mail-tester.com and easydmarc.com, and a whole slew of DNS settings that work to combat spam and email spoofing. And that rabbit hole led me to discover other email issues I was going about daily life unaware of. My emails generally seemed to be working, I was communicating with others via my domain emails, and it seemed fine. That took a bit to figure out, but finally, I was getting all green check marks on the tests, even though I may still make more changes to my domain-related email.
This just added on top of trying to root cause other problems of running a website, nefarious bot visitors, AI scraping, attacks, automated tasks that may or may not be running correctly – what I generally bin to the catch-all … technostress. But website problems only add on top of the other infiltrations of technology into our daily lives, managing a home network of an increasing number of IoT devices which may or may not be “plug n play.”
Anyway, this was rather a long way to say sorry to folks not getting notified of the replies to their comments. It seems to be working again via some tests I’ve done and probably should have kept on doing. There is just only so much time one can spend on this stuff in a day. I have come to a realization I need to take a step back and try to simplify many aspects of running this website. I am a tinkerer to a fault for sure, but “webmaster” would be perhaps a stretch. Even when you go searching for solutions, much of the help you search for is either too much technobabble or too basic (and largely AI-written!) to be helpful for specific problems. It ends up being so very time-consuming to sort out. Sometimes I enjoy getting into it and learning, other times, to use a previous topic, it is too much clutter. Technoclutter – yeah, seems to fit.
Please don’t stress – just head back to the spot where you photographed the meadowlark. I recently when down the email setting rabbit hole myself (SPF, DMARC and friends) because emails to some correspondents from my domain were silently dropped. I figured it out the issue by sheer luck, but I needed a host admin to do the site configuration. And then wait for the DNS to update.
Haha, yeah that photo required getting up mighty early because it was so far away. But I think even that would be better than all those settings! 🙂
Ah the digital world. It’s supposed to just work and make our lives easier and simpler. I have my doubts 🙂
Don’t worry. The robot overlords will try to keep us content and silent.
The current and often valid concern over security these days often works against any notification system of convenience, and what works today is never a guarantee that it will work correctly tomorrow. It depends upon my mood if I find chasing down these issues an entertaining learning experience or just a pain in the a##. That’s a lovely rendering of the Eastern Meadowlark!
I am leaning more towards the pain in the a## part lately. I think I am gaining perspective on the old dog/new tricks adage. At a certain point, tech starts moving past you and it is hard to catch up. Thanks for the kind words on the meadowlark.
Well thank you for taking all that time, since it looks like I was one of the people who didn’t hear about your reply to a comment. But yes, it sounds like way too much technoclutter! I hope that’s the end of it, at least for a while. I’d rather you spend your time photographing and creating posts. 🙂
I expect you didn’t hear about replies to comments for some time, and that’s on me. Sorry about that Lynn.
Technoclutter…. works for me! I have removes several plugins because they confuse me and I feel at times make it more complicated than it needs to be. Keep it simple is preferable for me. I’m not very tech savvy and when I go searching in that rabbit hole I can easily get lost. ? I’ve noticed some who do not respond to my comments and have just had to let go of it. For sure it could be the software. I seem to get your responses!
I do know that I check your box to save my name, email, and website and need to re-enter each time I comment. Doesn’t seem to remember or I don’t understand it . Again, other sites I visit do the same thing.
For what it’s worth Monte, that “save my name, email, …” never works for me either. I think it probably has something to do with cookies and that most web browsers block them or they get cleared and delete the information. I do try to reply to all comments just simply as a courtesy to someone who took the time to leave one, which I appreciate. But not all websites have email notification of comments, so then it requires someone coming back to see if someone replied, which isn’t exactly convenient. I guess that is where centralized social media platforms have some advantages over blogs, as much as we might not like it – it is easier to follow conversations.
Your email was one of those that rejected the comment notifications (at least so I was informed!) – so if they have always been going thru for you, despite telling me it was refused, well that is another mystery eh? But hopefully it is notifying you now at least.