Fahrblunget!*

That’s the only word I can think of to describe the past two days of near-madness trying to solve a technical problem that prevented any readers from sending me e-mail via the blog over the past year.

In that time, many people undoubtedly tried to contact me via the form linked at the top of this blog’s main page.  For some reason, I never received a single e mail ever since I moved to my current web host, WPEngine.  But I never realized this was happening until a reader posted a comment saying he’d tried to use the form and failed to reach me.  After two entire days of trying to get to the bottom of the problem, contacting my ISP’s security department and my web host, I discovered that my web host’s third-party e-mail client had likely placed my personal e mail address on a blacklist.  No one appears certain precisely why it happened.  But at least we now know it did happen and how to address it.

Initially, the web host technical staff who dealt with me didn’t understand the problem and gave me answers that turned out to be wrong.  These in turn led me down many dead-ends that wasted lots of time and effort.  But a manager who was experienced with e-mail issues got in touch with me and explained in much greater detail what happened.  That turned me around, and made me realize there was someone out there who shared with me a passion for figuring out the problem and doing a better job of dealing with it for other clients who might face it.

It’s shocking to me that I can summarize in two short paragraphs a problem that I agonized over for the past two days.  But there it is.  You can now contact me via the Contact link in this post and at the top of the page.  Special thanks to Ari for being the first to alert me to the problem.

*Fahrblunget is an extravagant and wonderful way to say in Yiddish, “messed up” or “dysfunctional.”