CHARLES PENG

Hi, there, this is Charles, glad to see all of you here. First of all, I have some questions to ask you: do you write blogs? Do you have a personal blog? And where is your blog hosted? Is your blog Hosted in a BSP (Blog Service Provider, like WordPress.com) or your self-hosted? This is a review of the best web hosting companies, which can help you to pick the right hosting company, if you want to have a  personal self-hosted blog or your own like me.

Compared with any BSP blog, for example, http://pengjiayou.wordpress.com, you have a personal domain name of your own, like http://www.charlespeng.com , this is your personal identification on the whole net, because it is unique. As you know, both wordpress.com blog and my blog are all driven by WordPress blog software, but things are quite different, you don’t have full permission to do things you want on wordpress.com, however, if you download wordpress software and upload and install to your own personal hosting, you will have the ability to do whatever you want (upload and backup files, upload and active any wordpress themes or plugins, backup your blog posts … etc). What you need is just a personal domain name and a comfortable, high-quality, fast and secure web hosting service. Here we go!

To register a domain name of your own, is a quite easy thing, I recommend GoDaddy or DomainSite, these are my current domain names providers that I like,  type a name you prefer, and then search, if it’s not regsited, fill in your own information and make payment, and the domain is yours! (Please don’t walk away, if you register one of the hosting companies for one year which I recommend below, you will get your own domain name free of charges, and you can also get some money returned from me, this is not a joke, that is to say, your first year of self-hosting will be more cheaper, please go on).

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I found myself so difficult to find a good hosting to blog, I just bought a Surpasshosting ONE LOVE TWO power plan, but the server IP assigned to me is blocked by the Great Firewall, although I made a decision to start English blogging, I don’t care Chinese people can access or not, because a few Chinese can read English even if what I write is just baby English(only some simple English), but it’s unconvinient for me to blog using Firefox + Tor, or upload & download files via FTP using a VPN software. So I finally refund Surpasshosting, their service is very good, I am sure, but I can’t  bear the speed, so I just moved Pengyulong Dot Com to a new one. So I hope all the user outside China continuing using their Power plan or other plans.

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I bought a host from Surpasshosting on Feb 25, 2008 when Surpasshosting is having another One Love Sale, pay only 1$ for a whole YEAR of their Power Plan package. This Power shared hosting plan offers enough storage and bandwidth for myself.

It is a great shame that my site server IP, which is  66.7.204.99, had been blocked by the great firewall of China for nearly 1 year. So my site can not be accessed in China successfully without Tor or other proxy servers. Their is no other solutions to solve this problem except to place my account on a dedicated IP (it is 4$/month) or to upgrade from the power shared hosting environment to a VPS or a Dedicated Server, it costs more.

It will be a large amount of money for myself. And what’s more is that I have already got a Hostgator reseller plan account hosting another of my blog,  so I don’t want to buy a delicated IP for this blog. And I buy Surpasshoting power plan for only 1$, i don’t want to pay more, I just want to test Surpasshosting, their services, website load speed and etc. If it’s good, I will decide to buy their power plan next year when the Hostgator reseller plan expires.

However, alought this site server IP was blocked, it can be accessed from other countries successfully. I will take good use of this hosting storage to post in English. The only problem is, it is very inconvenient for me to upload & download files via FTP with a proxy server or a VPN software. That bothers me a lot.

I am now posting using Firefox and Tor, very slow, but I can just have a try, always, now and in the future. Thanks Surpasshosting.
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