After weeks of testing, we have added a new server with CPanel for shared hosting customers in Shanghai. This new server is at China Netcom datacenter. We will be moving some of the clients from the previous two servers to the new one over the next few days. Concerned clients will have zero downtime during the transfer process.
After several weeks of testing, we are pleased to officially debut offering Hong Kong web hosting services. Our server is located in one of the top datacenters in Hong Kong, highly reliable, with good connectivity to mainland China, and would be the best option for clients who need good speed for their sites from both China and overseas.
The pricing of the hosting in Hong Kong would be the same as our current “International” locations, which means starting from RMB300/year (USD44) for 200MB disk space/2GB bandwidth/5 email accounts/5mysql database/CPanel, and includes a free domain name.
We only have a Linux server at the moment (LAMP). We will be also offering our standard email hosting plans using this new location.
Current customers who are on US locations and wish to transfer their sites to the Hong Kong server can do so but we charge a one-time service fee of RMB100.
We are happy to announce that new hosting accounts for our China Linux servers will be set up using CPanel. This will allow us to improve the general experience of our customers, while providing more options and functionalities.
The major upgrades over the current offer would be multiple mysql databases, sub-domains, and more stable email accounts (previously we had to use US email hosting for our China hosted clients).
We are pleased to pre-announce that we will be adding soon Hong Kong to the list of server locations available from SinoHosting. We expect it to go live in the first quarter of 2009. Subscribe to our newsletter or to this blog to receive updates when this comes into effect.
If you find that you are not receiving anymore visits from China, or have Chinese customers complain about not being able to visit your website, it might be because the site has been blocked by the Great Firewall. Below are some online tools that you can use to find out the truth:
1-Website Pulse: A great tool to ping websites from Shanghai, Beijing or Hong Kong. You also have the option to choose a non-China location (Seattle, Munich or Brisbane)
www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html
2-Just Ping: Over 30 locations available worldwide (including Shanghai), you can ping either a website or an IP address
3-Watchmouse: Also offering pinging from 30 locations including Shanghai in China:
After two months of trial period, we are now pleased to announce that Linux OS is now fully available for hosting in China. When signing up you will have the option to choose between Windows and Linux. The Linux hosting comes with Plesk control panel for easy server administration, with the interface available in both English and Chinese. Plans resources are the same as previously for the Windows hosting.
For clients already subscribed to Windows hosting unfortunately it won’t be possible to move your account to Linux hosting. However when your current contract expires you will be able to change it to Linux OS. If you need to purchase now a new Linux hosting account for a domain that was previously on Windows, you will get a 10% discount on the yearly price.
We are pleased to announce the upgrade of our web hosting plans starting immediately:
-Basic Plan: from 100MB to 200MB web space (2GB monthly bandwidth)
-Business Plan: from 300MB to 1,000MB web space (10GB monthly bandwidth)
-Corporate Plan: from 1GB to 5GB web space (25GB monthly bandwidth)
As previously, all the above plans come with free domain name registration.
Prices remain unchanged. We will manually upgrade current clients accounts over the course of the week, if by May 1st your account hasn’t been upgraded, make sure to contact us by email or open a support ticket on our website to get it done.
Please note that the service upgrade applies only to our international/overseas web hosting plans (Singapore, US and UK servers). There is no change for China hosting plans.
To learn more about our web hosting plans, or place an order, please go to our Web Hosting service page.
We are working on expanding our current web hosting product line in the coming weeks with the addition of China dedicated servers and China VPS (Windows OS). We will keep you updated through this blog and our newsletter when these products are launched.
One of the main worries our new clients have when signing up with us is whether their site will not be blocked from access. If you have or expect traffic from China, there is nothing worse than finding out that web visitors are unable to connect to your website.
Although most people know about wikipedia, blogspot blogs, BBC etc., well-known sites that are not accessible from China, the fact is there are thousands and thousands of unknown sites that also are out of reach from Chinese visitors. Most of them are not specifically banned because of their “improper” content, but rather victim of random blocking by the GFW (“great firewall”), or because they share the same IP (shared hosting) with a site that has been blocked.
Many clients that we have, both in China and overseas, were previously hosted by well-known overseas hosting companies (such as Godaddy, Hostgator and the like) but found out that their sites couldn’t be accessed in China. Other sites hosted by the same hosting companies did not suffer the same problem…
The fact is, no hosting company can guarantee a site to be unblocked in China. I would even say that no hosting company, at least the overseas ones, can guarantee its own website(s) to be unblocked here. However, here are six ways that will increase your site chances from not being cut from visitors located in mainland China:
1-Do not publish politically sensitive content (in Beijing’s standards), adult material or the like on your site, otherwise you will risk to trigger the automatic block from the GFW (which will affect by the way all the other sites on the same IP address).
2-If you host overseas, make sure that your host can move your site to a new server/IP address within a minimum time in case it happened that your site was blocked. As a reference, for our overseas-hosted accounts, SinoHosting.net has a system in place to move accounts to a new location in case an IP is found to be blocked, within 30mn after blocking is confirmed.
3-Choose a host who has a no-adult material policy. It will be more difficult however to find a host who will guarantee not hosting sites related to issues Beijing dislikes (Tian An Men, Taiwan, Falungong, Tibet etc.).
4-Get a dedicated IP. If you can afford it and if it makes sense for your site (in terms of potential revenue loss in case of site blocking), you should get a dedicated IP since it will reduce the risks of having your site blocked because of someone else wrongdoings.
5-Host in China. Chinese hosts are less likely to be blocked; downtime can happen only in case of server failure or the hosting company is found to be operating without proper licenses. However if the server is found to host adult or other forbidden materials, the authorities will have the server shut down pending further investigation, and it can take days for your site to be back live.
6-Make regular backups of your site, and make sure you retain your domain name servers (DNS) access. In case the worst was to happen, you will need to have the option to move rapidly to a new host without losing your site and files, within the shortest period of time.
Do you have your own opinion or more advices on keeping your site unblocked in China? Feel free to share.
Our corporate web hosting plan now can be used for up to 5 domains. If you plan to create multiple sites for your company or organization, this is probably the most suitable option. The total web space (1GB), bandwidth (20GB), and e-mail accounts (500) will be shared between the five sub-hosting accounts, and each account will have its own control panel.
The current price of your corporate web hosting package is RMB1,450 per year. Furthermore, you can take advantage of our January promotion and have a 10% discount if you order this package before January 31st, 2008. For more details please visit our web hosting packages page.
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