According to the last report from Syria, Google’s Blogger platform, which hosts the popular blogspot.com blogs, is apparently being blocked by all Syrian ISPs. Syria has blocked access to Blogspot on more than one occasion. It started in February 2006 when Damascus-based bloggers reported that both government-affiliated ISPs, Syrian Telecom and Aloola (former Syrian Computer Society -SCS), have blocked access to all blogs hosted at Blogspot. In October 2006, subscribers of the private ISP AYA, reported to be unable to reach blogspot blogging platform, although access to the main www.blogger.com (dashboard) was still available. In June 2007, The Syria News Wire reported that the ban on Blogspot has been lifted.
This reminds us once again of the Pakistani blanket ban on Blogspot and the circumvention techniques employed by Pakistani and then Indian bloggers:
- In March, 2006, the Memon brothers (Yasir Memon & Naveed Memon) created the proxy servers pkblogs.com to bypass the ban on blogspot.com. And later, in July 2006, when Indian ISPs have begun blocking access to Blogspot, Memon brothers launched Inblogs.net which is similar to pkblogs.com but more suited for the Indian traffic.
- The Pakistani blogger Mansoor has created a GreaseMonkey script for FireFox which automatically converts blogspot links to pkblogs and subsequently inblogs.
- Adnan Siddiqui has written a JavaScript that allows websites visitors to automatically use pkblogs for all outgoing blogspot links. You can download the .zip file from Don’t Block the Blog.
Now, with the Blogspot block in Syria showing no sign of abating, and if the above circumvention techniques won’t work for one reason or another, and in case you get tired finding proxies and workarounds to bypass the ban on Blogspot, you may consider it worthwhile to import your blog from Blogger.com into wordpress.com.
Click on the image to watch the video
As illustrated in this video, importing blogger into wordpress.com is a very easy procedure. However, before starting the import, please read carefully what to do after the import process, like what to do with your old images still hosted on Blogger.com and how to deal with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) issues, such as Google indexing your old blog content.
You should also think about informing your visitors and friend of your new blog (blog URL, blog name). You may also redirect them automatically to your new blog by adding a redirecting script into your blogger.com template like this one (just replace the old code with this script and make sure to put the right URL of the new wordpress blog) :
Share this article:
[...] Press Network: http://www.arabpressnetwork.org/articlesv2.php?id=1574 - Global Voices en Blogspot: http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/?p=146 8. FILIPINAS: DENUNCIAR LA CORRUPCIÓN ES UNA TAREA [...]
posted on October 29th, 2007 at 1:00 am - #3764[...] Amre, Abu Fares, Yaser, Sami and I have blogged about the blocking of Blogger in Syria, or else we would have been imagining [...]
posted on November 1st, 2007 at 11:45 pm - #3941[...] Article Next article Khimich::Next Article Next article Khimich::Next Article Next article Khimich::Next Article Next [...]
posted on November 9th, 2007 at 12:57 am - #4245[...] drei Monate haben die Türkei, Thailand und China wordpress.com gesperrt. Während Blogspot in Syrien und Pakistan dauerhaft gesperrt ist, ist die Seite in China seit kurzem wieder zugänglich. Der [...]
posted on November 25th, 2007 at 9:53 pm - #5044