January 30th, 2010 admin
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.
Posted in Web Hosting | No Comments »
January 27th, 2010 admin
We have new openings at our Shanghai office:
-Linux server admin, full-time, knowledgeable in CentOS server administration and WHM/CPanel
-Helpdesk Support Staff, part-time or intern, for helping in sales but also basic client support.
For details on job description and requirements, please check our China web hosting jobs page.
Posted in Company News | No Comments »
January 11th, 2010 admin
Due to a decision by our registrar, we are temporarily suspending dot cn domain name registration. This is a consequence of the tougher restrictions and registration process that were enabled by the CNNIC last month. We hope that restrictions will be somewhat relaxed after the Chinese New Year holiday or later in the year. Sorry for the inconvenience caused.
The Management
www.sinohosting.net
Posted in Company News, Domain Names | No Comments »
January 8th, 2010 admin
It appears our server with IP 210.52.223.92 has a hard drive failure. This causes all sites on that server to be inaccessible. Our techs are working on the issue either to fix the hard drive, or retrieve the data to upload to a new drive. If you are on this server and have a backup of your site, you can send an email to support@sinohosting.net or open a support ticket and we can set you up temporary an account on a new server, which should have your site back online within 30mn.
Posted in Service Update | 1 Comment »
December 23rd, 2009 admin
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).
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December 22nd, 2009 admin
We will be launching our new VPS lines this Friday. Clients on China VPS plans who have been shut down recently for not having an ICP license will be sent new account information for the equivalent Hong Kong VPS plan as soon as their account is set up. If you do have an ICP license please contact us to have your VPS plan set up on our new Guangdong VPS node.
The Management
www.sinohosting.net
Posted in VPS | 2 Comments »
December 17th, 2009 admin
We have been informed by our dot cn registrar of new regulations issued by the CNNIC (the organization in charge of the management of the dot cn registry). The new regulations do not affect domain names registered prior to this announcement.
In brief, first dot cn domain names (which include .cn, .com.cn , .net.cn, .org.cn, as well as regional extensions such as .sh.cn , .gd.cn, .bj.cn etc.) will now be available for registration only for registered companies (Chinese or foreign). Second, upon registration, the applicant need to file and send through the registrar a paper application, and join to this application a copy of his business license and a copy of his ID (ID card for Chinese nationals and passport for foreigners). The paper application needs to bear the official seal of the applying company.
For more details on these new rules, please check this link on the CNNIC official website.
Considering that the new regulations increase the work load to process a dot cn registration, we have decided to increase the registration price by RMB50, to RMB125/year. They will still be included for free though with our web hosting packages.
Posted in Domain Names | No Comments »
December 15th, 2009 admin
Due to the multiple restrictions at Shanghai Telecom datacenter, we will be moving soon our VPS users to a new datacenter in Guangdong province, as well as another Shanghai datacenter with another ISP. If you are a VPS user please make sure to make a full back up of your data as soon as possible, as we will not be able to migrate the data from old server in Shanghai to the new in Guangdong. VPS clients will be sent an email with their new VPS IP address when this is completed.
For any question on this migration, please open a support ticket at our website.
The Management
www.sinohosting.net
Posted in Service Update, VPS | No Comments »
December 9th, 2009 admin
We have just been notified by the datacenters we are using of temporary shut down at their level. There are basically tens of thousands of websites affected by this, including many of our clients hosted in China. While we are working with our datacenters to get our servers back as soon as network activity resumes, our only option is to wait since this is a government decision.
You can download the original message below (in Chinese) from here.
Posted in Service Update | 3 Comments »
December 6th, 2009 admin
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/
Posted in Newsletters, Web Hosting | No Comments »
