The "My Account" part of our website is your best source of information about how your account is setup, and what services you have bought. It will show you what domain registrations, and what web hosting serverices are associated with your billing id.

Logging In

You can login to the "My Account" area with your billing ID and either an invoice # or a billing password. As of early 2005 all new billing IDs are assigned a random password when they are created. If your account does not have a billing password, or you have forgotten it, you can login with an invoice # and use the "Reset my password" to mail a new random password to the e-mail address listed for your billing ID.

Logging in with an invoice # will produce a session with limited functionality. If your account does not have a billing password, then many of the options will still be enabled, but at a limited level. If your account has a password set and you login with an invoice #, then only the 'reset my password' and the link to the domain registration system will be active.

(This is done to protect your privacy since invoice numbers and some billing ids are easy to guess).

Services

The "My Account" area provides full listings of your domain registrations and hosting services. It also allows you to pay invoices, buy credit, and update your contact information.

Services - Domain Registrations

The main domain page is a list of your domain registrations, the configured service (if any), and expiry date (for domains we are the registrar of).

You can sort based on domain name, configured service type, or expiry date. You can check off a group of domains for a convenient bulk renewal. You can add or remove domains from this list.

Logging in with a billing password enables a few extra options. You can do most domain management actions without needing to provide a domain management password (or auth code). The password enables the "Web Service Wizard" which is a easy way to configure our free domain forwarding services (the password is required since the wizard may need to change the DNS servers for your domain). If you renew domain registrations, the password may allow the third payment option "pay on credit" if your account has sufficient credit.

Services - Virtual Servers / Web Hosting

The main virtual server page shows the domain name, the service type, the main FTP account for the domain, and the "billed until" date. The detail page provides more information about the account, as well as links to a domain whois page, the domain management page (for changing domain registration details like contacts and DNS servers), and a link to the webservice wizard if you logged in with a password. The page also provides a text area for you to enter a "change request" which basically sends a message to support@baremetal.com. Many requests will need to be confirmed via e-mail if you have not logged in with a password.

Services - Paying Invoices

This menu item allows you to see, search, and pay invoices. The check box on the left allows you to select invoices to pay. If you have credit invoices (e.g. with a value less than zero) you can leave those checked to reduce the amount of your "grand total". The search feature is a simple string match and can be very usefull for extracting billing history for a given domain. The tabs at the top can be used to select between displaying: all, paid, or just unpaid invoices.

Services - Buy Credit

This basically allows you to make an advance payment on your account... this can be usefull in a number of circumstances, but the obvious two are: using our domain-watch.net service, and using the "pay on credit" capability of our domain registration system.

From an accounting point of view, we basically sell you a credit of X for X (where X is the amount you specify). Two invoices are added to your account, one for X and one for negative X dollars. The positive one is marked as paid which leaves you with an unpaid invoices for -X dollars (e.g. a credit).

We will refund a credit at any time, no questions asked (beyond the obvious security related ones that may be required to assure ourselves that the right person is getting the refund).

Services - Set / Reset / Change Password.

This menu item has different names depending on your account and how you logged in. Set implies you have no password, Reset implies you have a password but did not use it. Set and Reset will mail a new random password to the e-mail address on file. Change Password (which you see if you login with a password) will allow you to pick a new password (e.g. one you can remember).

Services - Update Contact Info

This menu item is only available if you logged in with a password. It allows you to change basically all your contact info (note that we do archive the old info for security/fraud reasons). It also allows you to specify a charity which is used when you do a domain registration or a renewal from inside the "My Account" area.