Syria: Blogspot blocked? What to do next?

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:

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.


Import Blogger into WordPress
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) :
redirecting-script

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