How to avoid site blocking in China?

[Lars]

This is a mystery to me... some people report that my portfolio site 8x10.se is inaccessible in China.

I have nothing political on my site, just photography-related, so I just don't understand. Moreover, this is a bit tricky (impossible) to troubleshoot.

China is a huge potential market so it's important to be able to reach it. The questions here:
- How does one ensure that a site has the best chance of being visible in China?
- Are there any known methods to verify visibility (except actually asking someone in China to check)?

Lars

(I do NOT want to initiate a political discussion about censorship with this thread, so if you want such a discussion, please start your own thread in Sunset Bar.)

 

[waynelake]

Just a thought. I wonder if a .cn would be the answer...? 8x10.cn
Might need to do more research... I do not know much but a thought...

Wayne

 

[Dale Allyn]

Lars,

There are lots of discussions online about this topic, and most seem to be rather marginal with regard to solid solutions or testing methods. Various ping services and html download services seem to be unreliable, etc.

One solution might be to host a sister site on a Chinese-based host such as SinoHosting.net (no experience with them) or similar. I've not studied the annual cost of using a Chinese host, but similar services in Thailand tend to be a bit cheaper than the in the U.S. and that's only a few dollars per month for a simple site.

I don't know if it would help to have a ".cn" top level domain name, but I like Wayne's idea as something worth considering. If your site is only getting snagged in a filter by some marginal quirk, the ".cn" may help it wiggle by.

It may also help to simply ask your current host what they suggest (if you have not). They should know what can be done to your site, if anything, which might help. My host is very service oriented, but I know that many are not.

My crappy site (I'm in the process of redoing it, slowwwly) gets traffic from China. Not a lot as it's not really promoted anywhere – just linked on a few blogs, etc., but I have visits daily from China. In fact, so far this month, China is the fourth highest country of traffic origin for me.

 

[Don Libby]

I checked my stats out of curiosity...

What traffic I get from China to my website is from
the Chinanet Shanghai Province Network (Shanghai),
the Oriental Cable Network Co. Ltd (Nagjing),
the Cncgroup Shandong Province Network (Shandong),
the Chinanet Beijing Province Network (Beijing),
the Chinanet Guangdong Province Network (Guandong),
the Beijing Primezone Technologies Inc. (Beijing),
the Beijing Guanghuan Xinwang Digital Technology Co.ltd, (Beijing) and probably a few others I missed but you get the point and I found it interesting.

I did a search of my blog and found the same.

No clue why one photographers site gets blocked and another isn't - no rhyme or reason here...

Don

Just a thought but could it be related to an ISP or hosting?

 

[johnastovall]

I'll bet it has to do with the numbers and the "x" in you site name and a filter thinks it is a porno site.

 

[Dale Allyn]

I'll bet it has to do with the numbers and the "x" in you site name and a filter thinks it is a porno site.

Interesting observation, John. Easy to test by loading the site to another domain name. A simple redirect might not work for the same reason, so I would think that one would want to do a separate instal of the site. Could be on the same server, but just another domain (sub-domain) depending on your hosting package. I run several sites (mostly dev. sites which are not visible to the public) on one account.