Post Incident Report - Email Delivery Issues (2nd Jan 2026)

Human error... it happens. We're all guilty of it. And in this instance, it was completely my fault.

During the Christmas/New Year wind-down period I decided to migrate Tophhie Social's SMTP settings over to a new email security system that Tophhie Cloud's internal infrastructure was utilising.

Easy, quick change to the SMTP URL in the /pds/pds.env file, and a re-typing of the From Email Address, and away we go. Well, turns out, making subtle changes like that whilst running solely on coffee and "good vibes" can sometimes equal silly mistakes.

Come on then... what did you mistype?

The complex password? Nope.
The SMTP server address? Nope.
The word "not"? Yes.

As I retyped the From address as it should have been...

"Tophhie Social <donotreply@tophhie.social>"

I made one tiny mistake...

"Tophhie Social <donutreply@tophhie.social>"

Funnily enough, the email address "donutreply@tophhie.social" doesn't exist in any of our systems... I mean, why would it?

So... when I tried to create a new test account earlier today, and stumbled upon an Internal Server Error when trying to verify the email address, it didn't take long for the shame to set in upon realising the mistake I'd made.

Triple check your changes kids... Regardless of how small you think they might be!