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Dalian

Wordpress.com and the Great Firewall of China

By thomascrampton ⋅ September 3, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

As a loyal and fairly long-term user of Wordpress.com, I was very disappointed to recently learn that all Wordpress.com blogs are blocked in China.

Not only does my blog miss out on 1.2 billion potential readers, but this week I am attending the World Economic Forum’s Summer Davos in Dalian, China. I plan to blog about the conference and then spend some time traveling in China afterwards.

I do not hold it against Wordpress.com that they are blocked in China. Many publications, including my former employer, the International Herald Tribune, have distribution blocked on a fairly regular basis.

To solve the problem, I sought solutions on the Wordpress.com forum. The best answer seemed to be migration away from the excellent Wordpress.com service towards a hosted server that is not blocked by the Chinese authorities. (I would provide a link to the posting, but I cannot reach the forum since I am already in China.)

What I do hold against Wordpress.com is the difficulties they put in front of my migrating away from their service.

It was only thanks to a good deal of time spent by a generous Internet expert reprogramming my site that I am able to have this rudimentary blog up and running on a server not blocked by the Great Firewall of China.

This blog is only a rudimentary version because Wordpress.com does not easily allow the exporting of images. The situation reminds me of the Roach Motel: Photos check in, but they can’t check out.

Any ideas of what to do - short of downloading the photos one-by-one - very welcome! (Also, any anecdotes on Wordpress.com in China!)

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Dalian, Davos, World Economic Forum

Discussion

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  • GARY
    I have the same problem when I first came to China.
    I tried many ways to break the insane GFW.

    Finally, I found a best solution - HotSpot Shield.

    here is the link:
    http://www.hotspotshield.com/

    Try it, i think it is much better then web proxy.

    I hope this can help you.
  • Something recent and interesting:
    How to test if your site is blocked
    The fix
    http://f6design.com/journal/2008/07/06/my-run-i...
  • I can confirm that since end of July 08 my own website, on Dreamhost,has started to be blocked behind the GFW..
    I think the new blocking level of GFW is from keywords. Reasons ?
    I don't speak of politics but I unfortunatelly love landscapes of Sichuan and people there. So they might have take the fact of mentioning Sichuan as offensive ...
    (Oh poor my.I also mentionned one year ago I could not go to TB for visa reasons .)
    So I can say that the GFW can block only your domain even when you are hosted on Dreamhost.
  • John
    I can confirm that wordpress is still blocked successfully throughout China as of late July 08. It is very frustrating.
  • Yashodhara
    Blocked solid everywhere in China. COnfirmed now on multiple business trip since last 1 year.

    Sad.

    But, this is China's prerogative. I respect that.
  • amy
    Hello Blogger,

    Is Wordpress still blocked in China? I will be traveling there in two weeks and I am an avid travel blogger. I hope everything is pleasant with you. Thank you!!

    .amy.
  • benjasmine
    i live in the US, and it's hard to share things with my friends in China. Flickr is blocked, wordpress is blocked, and for some reasons, my own domains don't work for them either... I'm thinking to get a blog service that is hosted in China...
    Truth will come to light sooner or later, but apparently Chinese authorities have succeed their goal.
  • thomascrampton
    Tom: Welcome behind the Great Firewall!

    My solution was to leave wordpress.com and use a self-hosted version of Wordpress. A high-tech friend did this for me, but blog still not as good as it was (Many broken links I have not bothered to repair). Suggest you find such a friend or hire someone. Dreamhost is a common place to host that is not blocked by China.

    Please do shoot me an email to the solution you find or - better yet - post your solution here. It could help others!
  • Tom
    Hello,

    I'm a journalist from Belgium just arrived in Beijing. I have to work here as correspondent for one year for tv, radio & internet. Just found out that my blog on wordpress is also blocked. So cruel as a chinese welcome. Please, do you have any solutions yet?

    regards, Tom
  • miiiiiiiiiiii
    hey
    this software may help you
    http://www.wujie.net/download.htm
    i'm a chinese who use 'wujie' to borrow your website
    'wujie.net' is also blocked :-(
  • JC
    I just began a Wordpress blog in Shanghai two weeks ago and I can report that it's not completely blocked. Anyway, it's more accessible than typepad, blogspot, squarespace, and a few others. Wordpress is slow as hell to load most days, and sometimes it's blocked, but I've been able to access and update it daily -- usually in the evenings. The stuff that's blocked here is so random and often regionally applied. Some cities have access to blogspot at times, others don't. Some can see wikipedia at times, others can't. I imagine we'll experience a full flowering of access beginning spring 2008, though the faucets may get shut off again this time next year after Olympic fever is cured.
  • bennie
    yuk."
    "sorry we block you because we need to achieve a harmonic society."
    yuk,again.
    'Cause,I'm a Chinese.Like you guys say:we love peace.
  • victor
    sorry we block you because we need to achieve a harmonic society.
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thomascramptonconf

Thomas Crampton was a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times for more than a decade, reporting from five continents, writing a column on Asia and covering Asian politics, economics and culture. Currently based in Hong Kong, he writes here about China, the Internet and New Media seen from Asia, while also advising companies on digital communication strategies. For more information click here...