RYDIA.NET

BOOKMARK THIS LINK! It contains almost all the information you'll ever need to set up a happy home here at Rydia.net; Additionally, it will be updated whenever necessary by Rydia.net staff. Please read these introductory instructions thoroughly. If your question is not answered by your welcome email or this page, please contact account services by replying to your welcome e-mail.

All future/past outages, updates to this page or any portion of Rydia.net, and/or miscellaneous news will be reported in Rydia's Service LiveJournal in a timely manner. Please check it when in doubt!

Table Of Contents

- The Essentials

- Your Responsibilities

- Domain Names at Rydia

- Billing/Payment Policies

- E-mail, FTP and web statistics

- The Rydia Artist Community

The Essential Points

ALWAYS specify your USERNAME when contacting us so we know who you are.

The Rydia Portal is your ticket to accessing your account information online. You can log in and pay for your account by Paypal or credit card, check your billing date, check your space/bandwidth quota, etc. For service related requests, log in and then click 'Request Help' near the bottom of the page.

You may have your site listed on the Hosted section of Rydia.net. send us a title and description of your finished website. Please keep your listing updated!

Your Responsibilities

Keep your primary e-mail up-to-date. Your primary email is the one we've been using to communicate since account setup. It will be used only for direct communication to/from Rydia.net. Please contact us with a new email at any time if you'd like to change it. FAILURE TO DO SO MAY CAUSE COMMUNICATIONS DELAYS, which may result in account suspensions. We are active spam fighters, so rest easy - we won't sell or give your email away!

Keep your account current. We don't bill our customers every month and don't penalize if you miss your payment date by a day/week/month or so. Our flexibility helps both local and international customers by letting them pay when it's most convenient; however, please do not wait any later than 3 months after your due date. Every payment you make will be reflected in your online account information promptly; thus, we encourage you to keep an eye on your due date.

Change your password regularly, and make sure you keep all your CGI/scripts updated with the latest patches. Failure to do so may harm both yourself and Rydia.net; if there is a service compromise and it is traced to a security hole in your account, we reserve the right to terminate your service immediately. We care deeply about providing secure and robust service; please help us do so.

Domain Names at Rydia

For New Domain Name Owners:

Remember that it may take 24-48 hours for your new domain name to propagate, or spread around the internet (ike gossip). This means that while you already have access to your Rydia.net webspace via FTP, you may not see your webpages appear at your domain URL for two days or so. You have probably been provided with a temporary subdomain to access your account online, (If you haven't, feel free to request one) which you can use in the meantime.

Prospective Domain owners: Do you still owe us a domain name payment?

If so, login to Rydia.net, and make a payment via Paypal or credit card to dormando at rydia (dot) net ASAP so that you may get the full benefits of your account online! Once we receive and process your payment, your domain will begin pointing at your Rydia account within 24-48 hours.

Billing/Payment Policies

We accept Paypal, as well as any major credit card, through our Paypal-run system (you do not need an account to pay by credit card). Simply log into the Rydia Portal to make an electronic, secure payment.

We don't mind if you send monthly payments a few days late, or pay in bulk (i.e. 3-4 months at once). As long as you are reasonably on top of the payments, we will not randomly disable or shut down your account. Please help us out by being as punctual as you can!

Please note that only a few people have been OK'ed for check payments, as we strongly prefer electronic payments. If you have been pre-authorized for payments via check and need our address, or if you need to make a postal mail payment, contact account services.

TIP: Tired of forgetting your due date, forgetting to pay your account balance, or logging into Paypal? Take advantage of our newest feature; sign up for Rydia.net auto-debit for your account today!

Click here to set up $5.00/month recurring Rydia.net auto-debit payments

Click here to set up $10.00/month recurring Rydia.net auto-debit payments

Click here to set up $20.00/month Rydia.net auto-debit payments

E-Mail, FTP, and Web statistics at Rydia

Once your domain's nailed down/paid for, and your FTP is working, you can request POP3/IMAP/webmail account(s) or forwarder email account(s) by logging into the Rydia Portal (above) and submitting the service request. Non-domain Rydia members can request an @rydia.net email account as well.

Our normal email accounts for domains are both POP3/IMAP compatible, and also web-accessible. Our forwarder accounts are flexible as well; you can have a specific name, or a catch-all for your domain; just tell us what you want, and we'll do our best to fill your request.

If you have an email account(s) at Rydia.net, we will email your individual information to you, most likely in the same email that pointed you to this New Account welcoming page.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol):

The FTP server hostname is FTP.RYDIA.NET
You can FTP to your account using the username (all lowercase) / password assigned to you, and place files in the html directory (the folder named html). This requires an FTP software: for PC users, we recommend the nice and free Filezilla to all Rydia.net customers. Mac users, check out Cyberduck, also free FTP software that's quite nice. Both software packages are nicely documented with instructions on how to use them. We also have a tutorial (a bit outdated now) for Filezilla here.

Web Statistics (counter, referrals, etc):

Rydia.net members can check their website's WEB STATISTICS, which are are updated at 2am EST, by going to http://yoururl.rydia.net/stats/ or http://www.yourdomain.com/stats.

The Rydia Artist Community

Rydia.net is serious about promoting the arts online - in fact, we didn't really think about making money off webhosting until we realized (recently) that we needed funds in order to buy better equipment and make cooler tools for the artists we host! As a member of Rydia.net you are welcome to various benefits.

You may have your site listed on our Hosted Sites page.
You may take part in our Rydia.net-exclusive banner exchange program.
You are entitled to account/software tech support from Rydia.net.

Additionally, please join us on at rTACo (our oekaki board) and our message forums for lots of fun, artistic talent, and community interaction. Bring your friends - everything offered at Rydia.net's community page is free.