After months of development, we are happy to announce the launch of our Plesk-based Windows shared hosting plans in Hong Kong. The new platform represents an upgrade of the previous system which was based on a Chinese control panel and had very limited features.

The new Plesk shared hosting server includes the following:
-Windows server 2008 operating system
-AMD 8 cores processor with 15K SAS storage
-Bilingual administration panel (English and Simplified Chinese)
-Local email functionality
-MSSQL 2005/Mysql databases with local database administration software
-ASP, ASP.net and PHP 5.2 support
-Spam Assassin, antiviruses, and Plesk application pack

Overall this would improve the overall reliability of our Hong Kong Windows offering.

We will be transferring existing clients on the old system to the new platform over the next month. Our support department will be contacting you shortly if you are currently on such plan. In case you want to expedite the transfer of your account, please open a support ticket or email to support @ sinohosting.net

We have written a short guide to assist our clients looking to host in China and apply for an ICP license. Please check it at:

www.sinohosting.net/icp.php

The Management
SinoHosting.net

Please note that the main IP address for server tiger.sinohosting.net is now changed to the following: 121.127.250.204 ;

If you are using our domain name servers then there should be no change required from your end. You will simply need to update your FTP settings to the new value. If you are using an external DNS however you will need to update your records there.

For clients having their own dedicated IP address on this server there should be no change whatsoever unless further instructions.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused. Should you have any question feel free to open a support ticket from our website.

We wish you a happy holiday.

The Management
www.sinohosting.net

We have been advised by our Chinese datacenter that server with IP 61.147.124.150 has a website with contents forbidden by Chinese law. According to the local regulations, they have shut down this server pending further investigation. We are working with them in order to have the site removed and the server back online. However there is no specific timeline on how this will be done.

For clients who wish to do so we are currently restoring the latest available backup to another server. Please open a support ticket through our website if you are on this server and wants us to do that. Uploading and restoring a backup can take 1~4h depending of the size of your website. If you have your own backup, however, you can require from us to set up a new account and restore the backup by yourself, the new account set up can be done within 15mn.

While we apologize for the downtime occurred, there is nothing much we can do as this is part of how datacenters operate in mainland China.

In order to improve the reliability of our Windows offering in Hong Kong, we will be launching later this month a new server which with an English-based control panel (our current server is Chinese-based). Existing clients will be contacted when new server is ready and migrated for free.

The Management

www.sinohosting.net

CPanel, which runs on all our Linux servers, and is used by 97% of our clients, have a built in backup utility which allows users to do a full backup of their sites within a few minutes and save it to their computers. We recommend clients to do backups regularly to be able to restore their sites in case of emergencies. Although most of our servers have a weekly backup system or have a RAID configuration, the reality is backups can fail. By following this quick guide you will be able to backup your site when you want.

The backup process as below:

1-Log into your control panel, with your username and password. Access url would probably be www.yourdomainname.com/cpanel

2-Under the “Files” category, click on “Backups”

3-Choose the first option, Full Backup (“Download or Generate a Full Website Backup)

4-Choose “Home Directory” as Backup Destination. You can also input an email address to be notified when the backup is completed.

5-You finally click on “Generate a Backup”. CPanel will start preparing a full backup of your site.

Once the backup is completed, you can come back to click on the download link. Choose a location on your hard drive and click OK. Depending of the size of your site and your internet speed, it can take some time for the download to complete.

In case of server emergency, you will simply need to provide this backup to our admins and the backup will be restored to the new server within half an hour on average. This would include all the site contents, e-mails etc.

Another way to do the backup would be to download directly the home directory files (second option on point 3 of the above guide) and the databases if any. In this case the site can only be restored manually and not by our admins automatically.

How often should you do a backup? This would depends of whether your site is dynamic or static. The more often your site contents are updated the shorter the period between backups. We recommend at least one backup per month for static sites and one per week for dynamic sites.

Finally, a full backup can be useful when you prepare to do some advanced changes to your site, or have a third party work on it. In case anything goes awry, you will can always have your site restored to its initial form by providing us with the full backup.

We have been informed by our datacenter that, in compliance with the notices received from the Chinese ministry of information technology, they will be activating a software that would automatically shut down websites hosted at their servers without an ICP license.

Although most of our clients on China plans have obtained the license, there are a few ones that did not apply yet or whose application is still pending.  Please open a ticket or email to icp@sinohosting.net to check on your ICP application status, and in case you are unable to apply for the license (if you are based overseas without a Chinese presence for instance), make sure to contact us to migrate your account to our Hong Kong server (no ICP required for Hong Kong servers).

We have been informed by the various datacenters we use in mainland China that the ministry of information will be more strict in enforcing the existing requirements for China-hosted sites to apply for and obtain an ICP license. Over the last two weeks, we have already seen a couple of clients sites being shut down because of the lack of the ICP license, including some clients who were only using China servers for email-hosting. We believe the crackdown will only intensify in the period leading to the world expo in Shanghai in a few months.

If your site has already obtained an ICP license then there is no need to worry. If that is not the case, please take appropriate measures to fill the ICP application form and send back to us for our staff in charge to fill the application. You can download the form from
www.sinohosting.net/downloads/beian.doc

Please note that if you have filled this form previously and sent it back at the time you set up an account with us, this does not mean automatically that you have obtained an ICP license. Applications can be denied for various reasons and a new application will be required. You can verify your ICP registration status on the related government website (Chinese language proficiency required):
www.miibeian.gov.cn/chaxun/ggcx.jsp

Important. Personal sites can be registered under your own name with your passport number (please provide a real number as sometimes a copy of your passport would be required for verification). For business sites you will need a business license from a China-registered company. ICP license cannot be obtained under foreign companies business licenses (including Hong Kong or Taiwan companies). As a web host also we are unable to register the ICP under your name for clients sites as ICP registration information need to match the site owner information.

If you are based overseas without a company in mainland China, and do not have a Chinese partner to register the ICP license under, we advise you to move your site to our Hong Kong server. Please open a support ticket through your client area and our admins will assist you in the process.

If you site does not have an ICP license and you want to apply/re-apply now, please send your application form to icp@sinohosting.net , Andy Li in our Shanghai office will be helping in processing your application on a first-come first-served basis.

For any questions feel free to contact us at support@sinohosting.net (English) or icp@sinohosting.net (Chinese). For efficiency reasons ICP-related issues will not be handled over the phone.

For more details on the ICP in general, who needs to apply for it, and more, please check the blog post we have written on the subject:
http://blog.sinohosting.net/icp-license-in-china-what-you-need-to-know/

We have now enabled Fantastico on CPanel accounts at our Hong Kong hosting location.

Fantastico is a WHM/CPanel utility that allows users to add, update or delete useful open-source programs through a few clicks. These programs include blogs (WordPress, Nucleus etc.), content management systems or CMS (Drupal, Joomla, Mambo, Typo3, Xoops etc.), forums platforms (PHPBB, SMF), e-commerce software (Cubecart, OSCommerce, Zen Cart etc.) and many more.

This function will still be unavailable on the older server (IP 202.181.234.60), if you are on that server and need Fantastico, you can contact us to have a new account set up in another Hong Kong server and start migrating to that server.

We therefore now have Fantastico on our US, Singapore and Hong Kong locations. China-based CPanel accounts however do not have Fantastico enabled.

Due to the strong demand for our Hong Kong shared hosting accounts, we have added this month two new Linux servers. These servers are also CPanel-based with the latest PHP, Mysql configurations. The specs are higher than our previous server, so existing clients who want their accounts moved to this new server can contact us for us to set them up.