Blogs in China

[Understudy]

I want to continue writing while in China, and posting said writings for friends in the US to read. Does anyone have suggestions for blogs in english that have not been cut off by the great fire wall? I believe that I read Wordpress is not available?

[natra]

I have heard that the firewall restrictions can vary according to which region of China you are in, and the restrictions often change at random without any forewarning. Livejournal is generally always blocked. Blogspot seems to be blocked on and off.

One idea is to just use a proxy to access the website you want to post to. That way, you could probably just continue writing in the same blog you have now.

You can use TOR to bypass the firewall. While it makes your bandwidth speed a bit slow, it does the trick nonetheless. http://www.torproject.org/

If you want to have completely unrestricted access to the internet with higher bandwidth rates, you could consider purchasing a shell from a web hosting server for a few dollars a month. These are generally used for gaming platforms like World of Warcraft, but can also function as a proxy server.

[knadolny]

I asked this same question on the Chinese Pod community because I came to find that my blog is blocked in China. While I have said nothing close to offend the authorities in China, my blog was nonetheless blocked. It turns out that the firewall blocks servers and not individual websites. If you are using a server that is blocked then your website will be blocked. I use godaddy as my server and maybe their commercials offended the authorities. I run my website with wordpress (wordpress is blocked in China), but it's the godaddy server that is blocked (so I believe)

In any case the solution was to use a VPN (virtual private network) which costs some money but will do the trick.

I was also told that the proxy solution does not always work.

You can try using this website to check if you're website is blocked before heading to China. They check at locations throughout China.

http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html

Cheers,

Kevin

[gato]

Microsoft's MSN Space is not blocked and has lots of mainland Chinese users. It's a good option if you want to blog from China.

[roddy]

Godaddy I suspect is quite liberal in hosting gambling and adult sites, which are likely to attract a ban (I think gato pointed this out once - China is pretty proactive in banning those sites, and if you're on a webhost which allows them you're likely to be collateral damage.)

If you want to ensure your site is and stays accessible, stay away from the blog providers - what's blocked today may be accessible tomorrow, and vice versa. Currently I think Livejournal is available, but who knows how long for.

Best advice is

1) Go for something you pay for. That keeps out a lot of the types of site liable to attract attention. The more you pay, the less sites you will (probably ) share a server with.

2) Check policy on gambling and adult sites - if the host allows them, stay away. Eg, for your site, Kevin, a quick check here chucks up over 1,000 other domains, some of which are flagged up as adult. That may be the problem.

3) If you just want to be able to post stuff so that family and friends at home can read it, a VPN will work fine. If you want people in China to be able to read it, you need to think about the above.

[liuzhou]

I've been running a blog for the last five years. Apart from a 3 month block about four years ago, I have had no problems. In the event of it being blocked again, I can either use proxies or I can post direct to the blog by email.

Bizarrely, when it was blocked, my traffic actually rose!

It is a paid for service which as Roddy suggests, may help avoid problems.

[dali3927]

msn space sounds like a option for you, or you can try to find a free VPN to access your current blog, that way you don't have to switch to a different blog platform.