RHM Newsletter 42: Website and Email Changes

Posted by Dion Todd June 12th, 2024 559 Views 5 Comments

Hello everyone! Because there were significant and sudden changes that happened at RHM over the month of April, I wanted to send y'all an update on what has been happening. The Lord has brought positive changes, but they came in the midst of attacks from the enemy that we are still dealing with, so this newsletter is also a prayer request.

As a bit of background, when we started this ministry in 2013, we didn't have much in the way of resources to get started, nor did we know what it would grow into as time went on. To get started, we created the website using third-party software as a starting point. The email subscriptions were handled on one server, and the website accounts on another. Then, we made them work together with custom scripts.

As time went on, though, updates would occur that would cause errors that we were not able to fix because it started with that third-party software that didn't get along and with code that we didn't write. It was a fine way to get us started, but we always knew we would need to do something else to take us through the ministry’s long-term needs.

To resolve this issue, I started building a new ministry website from scratch, one that we could build into any form we needed, add features that would integrate into the base website, and have the mailing controls and abilities we wanted. A web application that is modular and could evolve with us and adapt to whatever we need, like adding apps for tablets and phones. Also, if there were an error, we would have the ability to deal with it. It is something I have been working on for the last couple of years because it was no small task to build it from nothing, and it had to fit in amongst our other ministry and life tasks.

We were still in the midst of working on it, but apparently, the Lord was ready for us to move on and get it launched! In April, we had a member who, even now, still wants to subscribe to the devotional, mark about a hundred of our past devotional emails as spam. They seem to have a mental health problem, so we sympathize. Nevertheless, it was rather catastrophic as it caused Yahoo and AOL to block our servers and, subsequently, others to block us because Yahoo did. We were not even able to get replies through to people asking questions. The last straw was the day we sent out the devotional and had 40,000 emails bounce back at us.

Since the new website and accompanying tools had email abilities that our old site did not, we decided that, ready or not, it was time to launch! Fortunately, the base functions of the website were mainly in place. We were still adding features like small groups, live chat, a functioning search, etc., but it was usable and already better than the old website ever was.

We did a Spring cleaning and unsubscribed about 40,000 subscribers and about 5,000 members from our emails and signed us up to send emails through Amazon Web Services as a fresh start. We only migrated people who had logged into the RHM website in the last year and thought that would be good. To be sure, they would want to hear from us. Well, most did, but there were still enough sending complaints to put us into "warning status," which was frustrating, to say the least. So we did another purge and unsubscribed everyone who had not logged into the new website that we launched on April 1st. Now, we are kind of holding on and seeing which way this will go.

One thing we have learned is that email delivery is becoming increasingly difficult, and every subscriber brings risk. Also, many of the people who mark the devotional as spam do not even realize what they are doing. We have had members who were very involved in the ministry mark the devotional as spam and then try to reverse it, but that is a one-way button. Once a person marks our mail as junk, future mail from us usually lands in your junk folder because it is now "trained" to do that. We pay for every email that goes out now, so in effect, we paid for them to do that to us.

Every email complaint gets sent back to us, so I built a "Naughty List" into our new website mail system. Any email address that marks one of our emails as junk will never receive another email from our server.

As with most situations, the Lord uses pressure to steer us and make us better. Learning to praise Him in the storm is part of everyone's growth journey. We had already been wanting other means of delivery besides email and we are actively working on that now, because we have to. We now have browser notifications, which will give you a little banner when the devotional is ready and, in the future, apps for phones and tablets. Also you can get notifications when you receive replies to your prayer requests or inbox messages.

We know that in our efforts to deal with all of the above, we caused confusion and inconvenience for a lot of you who actually want the devotional and to be a part of this online church community. We also know that it would have been a lot smoother if we had been able to announce the changes ahead of time. For both of those, we truly apologize. We so appreciate all of you who have been part of RHM, and who have prayed for and encouraged us through all these years. Unfortunately, because of the email delivery, sending out communications was not an option.

At this point, we are still blessed, pushing forward, and continuing to believe the Lord is part of this ministry…but we could also use prayer. I know we shouldn't take it personally, but it is a little difficult not to when people who signed up for the devotionals I prayed and worked so hard on mark them as "junk." For all of you who continue to walk with us, thank you all so much for your friendship, prayers, patience, and time. There will always be trials, but you all make it worthwhile!

If you are one of the folks who want the devotionals but have not been receiving them, create an account and edit your subscriptions. Or just contact us, and we will help you get set up!