Look at the receipients of the "registration will renew automatically in X days" email to work out your domain-administration login name

This article is about how you can work out what Google Account to use to check custom domain renewal details from the reminder emails that Google sends in the month before the domain registration expires.

Domain registration warning emails

If you have a custom domain that you purchased through Blogger (when that service was available), and you have not transferred that registration to another domain registrar, then every year you will get a series of email messages like this:

The message text is:

Hello, Your domain name, yourDomain.com, is configured for automatic renewal with registrar REGISTRAR (usually enom or goDaddy) on DATE. Each registration renewal is valid for one year. Google will charge your account after the renewal is complete. To ensure uninterrupted service, please follow these directions to update your payment method if needed. If you don’t want to renew your domain name and continue using Google Apps, you should turn off automatic renewal under the ‘Domain settings > Domain names’ tab in your Google Apps Admin console at http://admin.google.com. Please do not reply to this email; replies are not monitored.

What you need to do

The specific action that you need to do varies, according to what you have set up before, and what policy changes Google may have had.

• You may need to verify that you accept the current billing arrangements. 
• You may need to check that the credit card which you have registered on your account is still valid (even if it was previously, it may have retired since).
• You may even want to cancel the renewal, and thus give up the custom domain (in which case, I'd suggest re-directing your blog back to blogspot, too).

The only way to check what is required is to log on to your Google Apps Domain Administration account, and see what it tells you to do.

And pretty much the only thing you should not do is nothing:  you almost certainly either need to check your credit card, or cancel the renewal.

How to log on to your Google Apps Domain Administration account

What account to log on to

Many people say that working out what Domain Administrator account they need to log in to is difficult - and some are (mistakenly) absolutely convinced that they were able to renew previously using only the Google account that they use to manage the blog.

Unfortunately, the name of the Domain Administrator account can vary, depending on when you purchased the domain and whether or not you set up an administrator account for it at that time.

But, based on the reminder message that Google are now sending, there is a simple way to work it out:  look at the addresses that the reminder email is sent to.  What I have noticed lately is that these are:

1. The Domain Administrator account, and 
2. The Blogger account that set up the blog

Once you clearly understand that:

• The Domain Administrator is not the same as your Blogger account, 
• The Domain Administrator probably has an account-name like    bloggeradmin@YourDomain.com   or    your-admin-name@YourDomain.com

then hopefully this will be enough to help you understand which account you need to use.

Then log on - adding the account to your list

Click on the link in the email, which will take you to the Google Apps Admin console ie http://admin.google.com

Most likely, the Domain Administrator account that you worked out above will not be in the list of accounts that Google knows about on your PC (for a range of reasons - including that this is probably an account that you only use once per year).  So you need to use the Add Account button at the bottom of the list ( you may need to scroll down to reach it).

Enter your full Domain Administrator account name    eg   bloggeradmin@YourDomain.com

Either enter your password, or click the Need Help / I don't know my password options to get Google to help you with the password.    

Click Sign In

... and then follow the steps in the screens that Google presents to set up your billing and / overify your credit card.

Note:   Logging in to this account is likely to log you out of your standard Blogger / Gmail account.   If for some reason you don't want this to happen, then you may need to use a different browser to do the Domain Administration login.

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Related Articles:

Setting up your custom domain

Understanding Google and Blogger accounts