August 22nd, 2008 shadmin
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
www.just-ping.com/index.php
3-Watchmouse: Also offering pinging from 30 locations including Shanghai in China:
www.watchmouse.com/en/ping.php
Posted in General, Web Hosting | Comments Off on How to check whether your site is blocked in China or not
August 22nd, 2008 shadmin
It appears that leading US domain registration firm and web host Godaddy.com has been blocked in China. Trying to access today the site returns an error/timeout page (tested in Shanghai on China Telecom network). Many clients of Godaddy and other large overseas hosts (Yahoo Small Business, Hostmonster, Lunarpages etc.) have seen their specific servers blocked from time to time but this is probably the first time that the host’s domain itself is not accessible from China. No indication whether this is temporarily or not.
If you are a Godaddy user and considering a move to a host that will allow your sites to be accessible in China, you can consider us! Make sure to use “godaddy” as a coupon when placing the order online, to get a 10% discount. Please note that this coupon is only for sites previously hosted at godaddy.com, and is available for shared plans (China & US, both Linux and Windows). The promotion is valid till September 30th, 2008.
Posted in International | Comments Off on Godaddy blocked in China
July 16th, 2008 shadmin
If you are a Linux shared account customer (Chinese server), please be aware that following a server change the IP address of your server has now changed to 58.215.65.53. In case we manage your DNS then there is nothing to do at your side, since we would get it done by ourselves. If however you do control your domain name servers, you will need to update the A record to this new IP address.
If you need further assistance in that regard feel free to email us directly at support@sinohosting.net
Posted in Customer Support, Service Update | Comments Off on Change of IP address for the China Linux server
July 6th, 2008 shadmin
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.
Posted in Service Update, Web Hosting | Comments Off on Linux for China hosting
June 23rd, 2008 shadmin
We are currently upgrading our billing system (WHCMS), therefore it is not possible to place an order through it for the time being but we hope to get it back online within 24h.
In the meanwhile, all orders will be processed manually through email (support@sinohosting.net)
Posted in Service Update | Comments Off on Billing system maintenance
June 20th, 2008 shadmin
Starting from June 15th, one of our Singapore servers had been facing a huge DDOS attack, with the malicious computers found out later to be originating from China. Access to the sites were not possible and we couldn’t move them in the meantime. As a result our own site www.sinohosting.net which was on this server and some of the clients sites that were on the same server were unavailable for a few days while our server admins were resolving the issues.
A temporary solution has been to block access from Chinese IP addresses since the attacks came from China. We are now in the process of moving the sites to new locations and clients will be notified of the new IP addresses soon.
If your site has been affected we do present you our apologies although this was beyond our control. If your site was in another location (China, US or UK) or on one of the other two Singapore servers then you shouldn’t have experienced any issue at all.
Our email server has been affected as well so any support request or email that has been sent in the last 48H has probably been not received. We are working on retrieving the emails and will reply as soon as this is done. For urgent matters please send your emails to sinovantage@gmail.com or directly to Patrick at patrick@sinovantage.cn
Posted in Service Update | Comments Off on Singapore server downtime notice
May 21st, 2008 shadmin
As announced a few weeks before, we are pleased to launch today our China VPS plans. Both Linux and Windows VPS plans are available. The economy plan starts at RMB350/month (RMB280/mth for a 12 months billing cycle) with 10GB disk space (plus 10GB back up space), 256MB memory, 100GB monthly bandwidth, with Virtuozzo control panel available in English, Chinese and 10+ other languages. For details on all VPS plans available, please check: www.sinohosting.net/china-vps.php
Our dedicated server plans will be available by the end of next month.
Posted in Service Update, VPS | Comments Off on China VPS plans debut
May 13th, 2008 shadmin
We are pleased to announce that customers worldwide will now be able to pay for our hosting services using their credit cards. In partnership with Payoneer, you will be able to use your Visa or Mastercard credit card (or debit card) to make payments for our web hosting services. If you are based in the United States, you can even pay directly using your bank account.
When placing an order, please choose Credit Card (Mastercard or Visa) as payment method. If you experience any issue or need additional information, please email billing@sinohosting.net
Please note that if you are a Paypal user, you still can use your credit card to fund your payment through Paypal.
Posted in Company News, Customer Support, General | Comments Off on Direct credit card payment now available
April 28th, 2008 shadmin
In a circular notice sent to local registrars, the CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) has sent a reminder that blocking customers who wanted to move to another registrar was unlawful.
Indeed, “domain holding” or “domain ransom” is quite a widespread issue in mainland China, with hosts refusing to release customers domains when they wish to change of company. As a web hosting company, we have been again and again confronted with customers who wanted to move to us from a local Chinese hosting firm (due to poor performance, email delivery issues, high costs etc.), just to find out that the old company is rejecting any assistance in terms of transferring the domain to us. In many cases clients who didn’t want to lose their well-marketed domain names ended up staying with that old company they weren’t satisfied with. The only option in many cases were to keep the domain with the registrar then change the DNS to us only for web hosting/email hosting.
The CNNIC rules are clear in terms of domain transfer: customers CAN freely transfer their domains as long as they are 60 days old and over 15 days away from their expiration date. The domain should not be involved in any dispute and there should not be any outstanding fees to pay to the registrar at the moment the transfer is requested. The registrar is obligated to provide demanding customers with the auth code within three (3) working days. The losing registrar shouldn’t in any case ask for additional fees to authorize the transfer.
If you are about to register a domain name or start a website in China, you should take the following measures in order to avoid finding yourself in such situation: 1. Make sure to use a reputable host who has a clear policy in terms of domain transfer. SinoHosting.net for instance make sure to register all clients domain names under their own names, and they are 100% guaranteed to be able to transfer away if required. 2. If you move a lot, it makes sense to keep your domain registration company different from the actual web hosting company. It might cost a few dollars at most but it may save your business from losing its most important asset.
The litigation process involving the CNNIC or even the Chinese courts for domain names can be very long. Make sure to start from the right foot when you develop an online presence in China.
Posted in Domain Names | Comments Off on Chinese registrars required not to block customers who want to transfer away
April 22nd, 2008 shadmin
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.
Posted in Service Update, Web Hosting | Comments Off on Web Hosting Plans Upgrade Announcement
