Easiest way to build a simple website in China.

[ChTTay]

I had a quick search on here but couldn’t find any results. Essentially looking to make a simple website for my class. All I want is something that parents can access without a VPN. 

 

As simple as weebly or blogger. 

 

I’ve never hosted my own site. Would using Wordpress then paying for hosting within China/Asia work? 

[fabiothebest]

Well, as long as the domain isn't blacklisted anything is fine. Blogger is by Google hence it's blocked. Weebly isn't blocked. Also wordpress.com is accessible and anyway you also could register your personal domain and use a CMS that you prefer or build your website by yourself and it will never be blocked by default because it's new . If you want a .cn domain you'll have to get a license from the Chinese government to do it, but I haven't done it myself so I don't know exactly the requirements (maybe you need to be a resident in China?), but the good thing is you don't need a .cn domain unless you do it for SEO purposes or better speed, but any domain (.com or whatever is fine). If you are afraid that it isn't fast enough, you can eventually use a CDN with servers also in China or near China.

[fabiothebest]

If the website is for Chinese parents and you don't need something very customizable nor "foreigner-friendly", but something that can be set up quickly and accessed without problems by Chinese parents without spending anything for hosting and a domain, you also could look into Sina Blog, Tencent Dajia or Baidu Baijia.

[VocabSplitter]

To pass information to parents in China, it's more common and effective to create a Wechat group, and then invite the parents to join your group. The primary schools' teachers in China have already been using Wechat groups to communicate with parents for a long time, and parents love it!

 

But if you really want to build a Website, you may want to check http://www.wix.com So far, WIX is the easiest way I have ever known for creating a website. Although the UI of WIX is in English, but you can use WIX to create a Chinese website without any problem. The drawback is that it's not free. I think the monthly fee is around 10 US dollars.

[ChTTay]

Actually, many International schools don’t allow wechat communication between teachers and parents. It is that way in Chinese schools though. I have a newsletter but I’m looking at making something more useful. 

[fabiothebest]

I have a friend who is a teacher and he uses wechat at his school but students and parents send him messages at every hour, even at night and I think it isn't right. There's also a possibility to use wechat for posting articles in a read only fashion, so that it isn't a chat.  Anyway I understand your point, so I suggest you to see what I wrote above in my 2 comments. There are various alternatives. If you pick one, I'm sure I or other people can help you if you need. There are enough people in this forum with programming /web dev skills that can guide you. You just need to choose.

[timacro]

I use aliyun to deploy my Django project to serve my wechat mini program. If you want to do less programing,  At this site you can have a quick look at how to build a simple website with templates: https://www.aliyun.com/jianzhan/website?spm=5176.11769684.1158254.xiang0.1f1012d7m3CLw8

 

There may be some challenges that you might need to be familiar with Chinese to get the details

[timacro]

As for obtaining a domain,  it's easy to purchase a domain from wanwang.aliyun.com , then you have to apply for the ICP filing so people can access your website by the domain name. This also can be deal with at https://beian.aliyun.com/ . But I'm not sure if it makes a difference to foreigners.

[Jim]

My daughter's school uses 钉钉 DingTalk which seems to have a few more features than just a WeChat group, calendar and channel for notices etc. as well as the usual chat groups. Not sure if you could lock it down to keep parents from disturbing you out of hours, can certainly mute sub-groups

[ChTTay]

Cool. Thanks for the suggestions. My colleague told me he uses Wordpress and it works fine. I’ll check that out along with these suggestions.

 

I think schools like the formality of email and having a paper trail. Then also face to face communication of course! 

[fabiothebest]

Yes, I have a website that uses Wordpress (for other things) and I have an international audience (also Chinese netizens). Chinese could access also by using a VPN, but it isn't the case, because I checked and it isn't blocked by the Chinese government. There are services that allow you to check that, you basically need a server based in China to ping the address and see if it responds.