The new Sinosplice Design is up!

I’d like to say thanks again to Ryan of Dao by Design for all his hard work in this Sinosplice redesign. Much of the work that went into the new site was “under the hood,” as Ryan worked out ways for me to move my “WordPress + static file hybrid” site into a modern, fully CMS-managed website. Now I can do everything (all sorts of updates) through the WordPress admin panel, which is enormously convenient. Furthermore, Ryan was really…

Website Upgrade in Progress

Comments are now temporarily suspended on all blog posts as I prepare to move Sinosplice completely off DreamHost and onto WebFaction, my new host [more info].

On the new host Sinosplice will be sporting a new look (although much will remain the same… especially for you RSS readers!). Still simple and minimalist, but more professional and up-to-date, executed by Ryan of Dao By Design, the China blogosphere’s designer of choice.

Ryan and I will be tweaking…

New Host

I haven’t been posting much lately, but I’ve still been working on this site. I finally chose a new web host so that I can leave DreamHost. The new host is WebFaction, and so far it’s excellent. It’s not quite that simple, though.

WebFaction is excellent because:

No Longer Happy with DreamHost

I haven’t been blogging much lately because I’ve been looking for a new web host in my spare time. I’ve been with DreamHost for years, but recently their service has become unforgivably bad.

My main complaints are:

  1. My site was hacked while at DreamHost once. (One time is forgivable)

  2. My site was later hacked again, which was probably due to outdated web app installations (and not the previous hack). But DreamHost proved amazingly unhelpful in shutting

HACKED!

My web hosting provider, DreamHost, got hacked recently. In an e-mail to me, they wrote:

We have detected what appears to be the exploit of a number of accounts belonging to DreamHost customers, and it appears that your account was one of those affected.

We’re still working to determine how this occurred, but it appears that a 3rd party found a way to obtain the password information associated with approximately 3,500 separate FTP accounts and has used that

Comment Submit Issues

I’ve been getting reports of difficulty submitting comments. I’ve been having them too, and in the WordPress interface as well. The commenting difficulties go something like this:

  • IE users get a “page cannot be found” error after clicking “submit comment.”
  • Firefox users get absolutely nothing after clicking “submit comment.” It looks like it’s working, like a new page is loading, and then it just dies.

I’m not sure what’s causing this. It’s not a China issue, because it’s…

Reliable Web Hosting in China

Anyone who lives in China and maintains a website knows that it can be difficult. Websites are frequently blocked and unblocked for no discernible reason. Maintaining your website from China may become extremely difficult (if not impossible) if it is blocked in China. With this in mind, choosing a hosting service for your website can be tricky.

This article assumes you are looking for professional hosting which offers ample online disk space, reasonable bandwidth limits, MySQL databases, e-mail accounts, etc.…

No Comments

I have removed the comment function from this blog. Hopefully it will only be temporary. The reason is comment spam.

Although I actually see very little comment spam thanks to MT Blacklist, my comment script still gets hit hard by the spammers, who are then denied by MT Blacklist. Unfortunately, all those hits to the comment script put quite a strain on the server. That’s why my host disabled my comment script several times in the past.

A few…

Sinosplice and all material found herein © 2002-2010, John Pasden. All rights reserved.
Sinosplice is happily hosted by WebFaction. Design by Dao By Design