TheWeblogZone Has Been Unblocked From The Great Firewall Of China

I just got back to China from a two months long vacation in the Philippines. To my surprise, when I was about to update my blog, I couldn’t access it. I tried using other computers but I just can’t open my blog. I also checked the status of my blog with my host and there seems to be no problem. I then used a proxy to view it and it perfectly working.

My blog has been blocked by the Great Firewall of China. Considering that TheWeblogZone is all about blogging and that I have not written anything against China, why would my blog be blocked?

After doing a bit of research, I found out that the Great Firewall of China blocks a range of IP addresses, which means that if your blog is under a shared hosting plan you are at high risk of being blocked even if you didn’t write anything against China. If the other blogs who share the same host with you write something against China and gets blocked, your blog will most likely be blocked as well.

Prevention and Solutions

If you are blogging from China or you receive traffic from China, then you should be concerned about getting blocked by the Great Firewall. Believe me. It’s frustrating to know that you can’t even open your blog to update it or when you know that a huge potential traffic is lost. To prevent getting blocked by the Great Firewall of China, here are  a few tips for you.

1. Do not write sensitive political issues about China. (i.e. Tibet, Taiwan, Tiannanmen etc.) Especially when your article speak against Chinese government and authorities. I’m not saying that you stop exercising your freedom. But if you decide to exercise it, you should be willing to face the possible consequence of getting blocked in China.
2. Try to avail of a dedicated IP address. Like I have said awhile ago, you’re at risk if your blog is under a shared hosting plan. Having your own dedicated IP address means, you will be better protected from getting blocked.
3. Host your own blog. Avoid free hosting services. Free blog and hosting provided by Blogger and Wordpress are not ideal if you want to get traffic from mainland China. Blogger and Wordpress are blocked most of the time. Free hosting services are usually used by Chinese secessionist groups to attack China so they are usually blocked by the Great Firewall.
4. Don’t mess up with Chinese (from mainland China) bloggers and webmasters. These people can report your blog to the authorities. And since the administrators of the Great Firewall, don’t actually verify reports, your blog could end up being blocked by the Great Firewall.

I hope you found these tips useful.

I’ll share more about my experience in my future post. You can subscribe to my blog so you don’t miss any blogging tip or keep coming back for updates.

Thank you very much for your time.

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