March 30th, 2010 shadmin
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.
Posted in Service Update, Web Hosting | 1 Comment »
March 3rd, 2010 shadmin
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
Posted in Web Hosting | Comments Off on New Windows shared hosting server in Hong Kong later this month
January 30th, 2010 shadmin
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 | Comments Off on Doing a full backup in CPanel
December 23rd, 2009 shadmin
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).
Posted in Web Hosting | Comments Off on Shared hosting accounts on China servers without ICP licenses to be shut down soon
December 6th, 2009 shadmin
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:
https://blog.sinohosting.net/icp-license-in-china-what-you-need-to-know/
Posted in Newsletters, Web Hosting | Comments Off on ICP License Crackdown
October 24th, 2009 shadmin
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.
Posted in Service Update, Web Hosting | Comments Off on Hong Kong CPanel hosting now with Fantastico
October 10th, 2009 shadmin
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.
Posted in Service Update, Web Hosting | Comments Off on Two new Hong Kong servers available for shared hosting clients
July 1st, 2009 shadmin
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.
Posted in Company News, Service Update, Web Hosting | Comments Off on New server for shared hosting in Shanghai (China Netcom)
February 13th, 2009 shadmin
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.
Posted in Service Update, Web Hosting | Comments Off on Launch of our Hong Kong web hosting services
January 26th, 2009 shadmin
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).
Posted in Service Update, Web Hosting | Comments Off on CPanel hosting now available in China
