could this be relevant to our registration woes

[publicsphere]

a friend is trying to send email to my address. however, it keeps bouncing, sending...

# Perplexity & Steps
The error indicates that the message from your friend was rejected due to SPF (Sender Policy Framework) validation failure, meaning your friend's email server isn't correctly authorized to send messages on behalf of their email domain according to SPF records.

What is SPF Validation?
SPF is an email authentication protocol that helps prevent spam by verifying the sender's mail server is allowed to send email for their domain. If the sending server isn't listed in the domain's SPF record, receiving servers can reject emails to prevent spoofing.

Whose Issue Is It?
• Problem Origin: The issue is on your friend's side-their domain's SPF record doesn't permit the server they used for sending this email, so your receiving system (communitysense.nl) correctly flagged and rejected it.
• Your System: Since you received other emails without issue, your own account/server is working properly and your SPF setup does not block normal messages.

Steps to Fix
• For Your Friend:
• They should contact their email administrator or service provider and ask them to update the SPF record for their domain (publicsphereproject.org) to include the server they are sending from.
• If using a custom SMTP server or a third-party provider (e.g., Gmail, Outlook), the SPF record needs to list that provider.
• Resending the email from a different provider (like the native webmail of publicsphereproject.org if available) may work.
• For You:
• No changes needed, as your system is functioning correctly.

[publicsphere]

https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=spf%3apublicsphereproject.org&run=toolpage

[smrose]

Interesting. In this case, the "friend" is us.

These were steps I had to take in DNS back when I first set up Proton Mail in 2020, but it didn't occur to me to investigate it for publicsphereproject.org. In the case of Proton, here are their instructions:

https://proton.me/support/anti-spoofing-custom-domain

In the case of Dreamhost, they offer this guidance:

https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/216106197-Add-an-SPF-record

They say

DreamHost automatically adds SPF records to your site, so you only need to manually adjust an SPF record if you are also sending email through a third party, such as Google or Mailchimp.

They also say

These steps assume your nameservers are pointing to DreamHost. If they are not, you must update the SPF record at the company where they are currently pointing instead.

As you may recall, we aren't using Dreamhost for name service - we're using nearlyfreespeech.net. That shouldn't be a showstopper, but I think I need to understand the syntax of these records before I deploy.

(I'm not clear on what I'm reading above - is it output from an LLM?)