ISKTBN: i should know this by now.

Today on "Things I learned", I find out sharing, when it wants to, reveals a hell-ova-lot more about and you and your connections than you want it to. If you don't know already, I like dogs. Therefore, it's not a leap to believe that my recent video bing is all things dogs. Life feels hectic and dogs are fun. Plus dogs could give two shites about the crazy going on so long as they have a treat. And, gosh, those cute videos of puppies being sassy, it GETS me every time. And occasionally , I see a video from The Dodo about a dog that's been rescued that gives me heartbreak and joy. I can't spend too much time there because then I go down the rabbit hole of "How do I change my career to SAVE ALL THE DOGS?!" Where was I? I started talking dogs and everything went furry. Oh social media and sharing! I don't dabble in (non-business) social media much, other than the previously mentioned dog video bing. There is a part of me that feels I'm revealin...

Today on "Things my client and I learned", we find out the internet (via redirects), when it wants to, will 'eff up your sanity. I've been on a bender with so many of my stories focusing on DNS, but it's the backbone of the internet so it can't help but get in the way. And although the issue here isn't a DNS issue (that I can identify,) I bring it up because the story starts with a change made to the DNS. First, if you don't know anything about DNS other than it means "Domain Name System," know that DNS is damn hard and easy to mess up. Making changes to the DNS can be flat out terrifying. So after you make changes, if you find out something isn’t working (related to changes or not,) you immediately ask for help (or in my case a casual, "I noticed when I got to my site, it's not my site.") But you're not always able to explain what happened or why, all you can say is that things aren't working as they should. I will sa...

Today on "Things I learned", I continually find out email, when it wants to, will 'eff you up.  Mind you, this story  rant is riding on the coattails of a cold I've recently picked up, which means I'm a little more sassy with a glass half-full mindset. PSST: Email, if you're listening (reading,) I love you. It's not you, it's them. People are taking advantage of you and your awesomeness because behind you is a person. And that person has a value tied to it. The more persons, the more value. The more value, the more for potential 💰💰💰.  All this abusive nonsense is causing kerfuffles all over the place and I don't like it so I must rant about it. Again my cheery disposition has been waylaid by this cold. Forgive me. 🎵 Everybody in the club gettin' emails 🎵 Prior to this exuberant mood with which I am now infusing into my brooding pondering, I saw a LinkedIn post from Ron Dorsey pointing out how painfully obtrusive email collection is (hopef...

May 10, 2024 Update  and SPOILER ALERT  ( jump ahead if you want to read through the post first) I incorrectly attributed my success to DNS cache. But it wasn't DNS cache that saved my butt. It was nameservers (and I got lucky with timing.)  The information I was searching for was available not because of cache, but because GoDaddy's nameservers hadn't yet received the updated instructions to remove the DNS records. Looking at some of GoDaddy's documents for removing domain entries, they do list out recovery times if something was done in error, but that is likely some other process. I also asked someone at GoDaddy how the UI and DNS were connected, and they stated that although UI changes are typically updated on the nameservers quickly (within an hour), it can take longer.  THIS is why I was able to look up values well beyond the often generic TTL of 1 hour and the  records I needed were therefore  published long enough for me to go back and look them up...

Today on "Things I learned", I get reacquainted with punctuation and how it, when it wants to, will 'eff up your deliverability. 🎵 Dun dun  🎵 (my version of the  Law & Order transition sound) The consult started super simple.  <!--Heavily paraphrased conversation.--> CLIENT: "My emails are going to spam and I heard I have to make changes for Yahoo and Google, but I don't know what to do." ME: "Sweet! I can surely help with that. Would you like a technical review, strategic review, the works, or just a couple hours to provide you guidance?" CLIENT: "Let's start with a couple hours because I don't really know what I need, but I know I have to do something with a DKIM and an SPF." ME: "You got it! We'll start by meeting for an hour when you have availability and will go through it one step at a time. Then we can meet again if there is more to do or we can talk about any other issues or concerns you may have....

Today on "Things I learned", I get reacquainted with CNAMEs and how they, when they want to, will 'eff up your DNS records. A client engaged me for a "quick" domain warming for a rebranding. After review, this wasn't really a warming. The volume was too low. For me, the most important thing was making sure they were technically set up to be successful: authentication, working DNS, working mailboxes, etc. etc. etc. Yes, they had to be mindful of alerting their customers of their new domain in their email program, properly routing their current site to the new site and educating customers there as well. But most of their customers were already aware of the rebranding through direct 1:1 communications. The task was simple, get the domain setup, make sure it sits for an appropriate amount of time (minimum 30 days) without email activity, set up the website, get the right DNS records added, test, and make sure it all works. I started with their corporate mail and...

Today on "Things I learned", I find out spaces, when they want to, will 'eff up your DNS records. How do I know this. I had a potential client come in and ask why their email platform kept reporting to them that their DMARC wasn't set up.  Oooo, I know how to start this one (or so I thought)... Ask for a test message Proceed to check headers (as I'm using a Workspace, it's a super fast check-a-roo in the Authentication-Results: header) Double-check result against a couple online tools Everything looked peachy on the surface. DNS tools were showing it as correct and passing. Gmail was reporting that it was passing. But it still wasn't being sensed. Well, maybe it's a UI bug... Send a test to aboutmy.email . If that comes back as passing, it's gotta be the UI. Oh dang, aboutmy.email is saying it fails DMARC too. NOTE: I should have scrolled down at this point to see the details of the report, but I didn't have the results, my potential client on ...