How to set up a domain NOT blocked in China?

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  ericarnow · Member · Dec 13, 2013 at 8:20 am

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  Any web address with ‘wordpress’ is blocked in China. So my Chinese friends cannot get to my site. If I buy a domain with the same name, but without the ‘wordpress’, will they be able to access it? Or, will it somehow still be seen as a wordpress hosted site and be blocked anyway?

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  jackiedana · Member · Dec 13, 2013 at 10:16 pm

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  I’m afraid that China and some other countries block the traffic from many websites, including often sites at WordPress.com. In these cases they are blocking the entire service, not individual URLs, so it won’t matter if you have a custom domain or not.

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  mitsqcom · Member · Dec 17, 2013 at 7:49 pm

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  Actually, if you use a custom domain, visitors from China will be able to access it. Our site http://www.mitsq.com is hosted on WordPress.com and it is not only accessible, but very fast in China.

  However, displaying images uploaded to the blog can be a problem. Since all the content uploaded to your WordPress blog is hosted under files.wordpress.com, so they are not accessible in China. You can change the urls from http to https, so people in China can see the images. But this method will not help with featured images.

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  mitsqcom · Member · Dec 17, 2013 at 7:51 pm

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  Also, WordPress Stats doesn’t pick up visitor number from China, so this can be a problem.

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  jackiedana · Member · Dec 17, 2013 at 9:06 pm

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  @mitsqcom, this is interesting. It could be the domain or something else – I am unclear what China chooses to block or not block. At any rate, I am very happy to hear your site is visible in China.

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  auxclass · Member · Dec 17, 2013 at 9:46 pm

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  In the past I remember people with problems and China even with mapped domains showing up in the forum, if my memory is correct.

  I have a mapped domain and WordPress.COM shows a token 6 page views from China to my site in the last 90 days. Cluster maps show a few more page views from China since October when they reset the map.

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  jackiedana · Member · Dec 17, 2013 at 10:26 pm

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  Basically, we cannot guarantee that our users’ sites will be visible in countries that control internet access, and we have no control over whether or not it will actually be visible there.