Register and host a web site in Taiwan? Not easy

[Dog_s_Breakfast]

I was about to drop this topic since it didn’t seem to be generating much interest, but then I received a message today from someone who did follow my post and registered a .tw domain name with SeedNet. And he wanted to know if I’d made a decision about hosting.

I sent him a reply, and though I should probably write a more elegant message here, I’ve had a long day (up since 4:00 AM this morning) so I’m just going to post the message I sent to him and hope it makes sense. If anyone has more questions, I’ll spew out more info later as I gain some experience with my chosen web hosting service. So without further ado…

Hi XXXXX. Nice to meet you here in cyberspace.

The answer to your question is, yes indeed, I found a web hosting service here in Taiwan and have already signed up. It’s a good thing you contacted me, since there didn’t seem to be much interest in the thread on Formosa and I was on the verge of dropping the subject. But now that you’ve asked, I’ll probably go ahead and make one more post to explain how I got hosting.

I decided to use this service: twnoc.com

They run their servers on Linux, and are very cheap at NT$200/month for 80 GB of hard disk storage and 160 GB of data transfer per month. For an individual user, that should be way more than enough, but if your site takes off and becomes the next Facebook, you can always purchase additional bandwidth.

The biggest downside is that you’ll have to deal with some Chinese to sign up, but this can be made a lot easier if you’re running Google Chrome as your browser and you turn on language translation.

I can save you a bit of time. It you click on this link, it will take you directly to the sign-up page for a NT$200/month account:

twnoc.com/c200h_year.htm

Fortunately, most of the lines on page already have English. For those that don’t:

Line 6 asks for your backup (secondary) email address.
Lines 8 and 9 are asking for your business license number, but that isn’t required for a .tw site so you can leave it blank.
Line 11 contains two buttons which won’t be translated by Google Translate because they are graphics. The left button that says 同意本公司使用條款 (I agree to the terms of use) is the one you should click on after you’ve filled out the form. Click on the right button that says 重寫 only if you want to erase the form and start over again.

If you agree to the terms and click the left button, you’ll be presented with a page of (3) payment options. It’s entirely in Chinese, and in this case that’s good - attach a printer to your computer and print out that page. Option 1 is ATM transfer - not an option for me since I don’t have that feature enabled on my ATM card. I suggest taking the printout to a bank with NT$2400 and show it to a teller - you’ll have the choice of wire transfer option 2 (Yuanta Bank) or 3 (Post Office Bank). I wired the money to Yuanta Bank and within an hour received an email from Twnoc.com customer service that the money was received and I could start setting up my site. That email is all in Chinese - save it as it contains your password and valuable info for setting up DNS and your ftp account with temporary password, which you need to upload data to your site. You can have Google Translate turn this info into English, then save it.

That’s as far as I got today. I’ve already got the site minimally designed, so next step (tomorrow) will be uploading data with ftp.

cheers,
DB

[yuli]

[quote=“Dog’s_Breakfast”][quote=“yuli”]
My comments are addressing the topic of this thread: it is nowadays reasonably easy to register a domain in Taiwan and to host a website in Taiwan.
It’s also not expensive to do either.
[/quote]

Hmmm…have you actually tried it?[/quote]

Yes, but my domain is not a “.com.tw” domain because the rules say that this is only available to businesses registered in Taiwan.

As i mentioned before, the registrar i use is WIS.

Yet I was able to register a *.com.tw domain name in Malaysia, even though I am not a citizen or foreign resident of that country. Go figure.

That is something i cannot explain.

[Dog_s_Breakfast]

Strange, I made a post in reply to Yuli’s last message, but it seems to have vaporized in cyberspace. So I’m trying again…

@yuli

As i mentioned before, the registrar i use is WIS.

I didn’t realize that WIS was based in Taiwan, because it’s not listed as one of the 12 official registrars:

twnic.net.tw/english/dn/dn_03.htm

But I googled and found WIS. I assume it’s this organization:

domain.wis.com.tw/

Thanks for mentioning WIS Yuli. Though right now I don’t need it because I just registered a new site with Seednet, I bookmarked WIS for future reference.

cheers,
DB

[yuli]

[quote=“Dog’s_Breakfast”][…] WIS. I assume it’s this organization:

domain.wis.com.tw/[/quote]
That’s it.

What i like about them is the detailed DNS setup interface they provide (not necessary for most people, but i need this kind of “nerd tool” since with several domains i look after, there is a subdomain in another country or mail is handled by a server that is not the one where the related website is hosted). Namecheap (in the US) offers the same kind of tool, so i deal with them a lot when it comes to using common TLDs.

[yuli]

A bit of related information: as written in my SIG. You can have a website or mail set up for peanuts…

Right now I have some spare capacity for shared hosting in Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore at hand (what is available changes from time to time, and US and Europe based space may become available again, as well, before long.)

[Charlie_Phillips]

The links to Taiwan-based domain registrars and webhosting quoted in this thread are the worst web pages I’ve ever seen in 22 years of web surfing. I’m flabbergasted.

[yuli]

@Charlie Phillips

The links to Taiwan-based domain registrars and webhosting quoted in this thread are the worst web pages I’ve ever seen in 22 years of web surfing. I’m flabbergasted.

That sounds interesting (in a way). What would you say is the problem (if any)? Page design? Service offerings?

[xiexie3q]

I wanted to re-open this thread because I for one was curious about registering a domain for myself and my business. It’s been a few years since the original post - so here’s a 2019 update.

You do NOT need a registered business number to register a .com.tw., .tw domain (the .net.tw, or .org.tw, I can’t speak for) but I’ve used successfully for three years now:

ntchosting.com - they are ~$25USD at the time of writing this. (Prices as per their website)

But I also see ghandi net is at a $13.17 USD at the time of writing this, with a promo code you can easily find online for the first year, then renewal is ~$23.26USD.

They just ask for your name and address - and this information can be any vague information you feed it - it does not have to be accurate.

There’s a slew of other registrars for .tw, .com.tw, etc domains now as well. tld-list.com has a good assortment of them available - and there are a few others hiding in Google, Yahoo, and Bing results if you dig deep enough.

Enjoy! And happy Taiwan domain’ing!

-Jojo

[Charlie_Phillips]

@yuli

That’s it.

What i like about them is the detailed DNS setup interface they provide (not necessary for most people, but i need this kind of “nerd tool” since with several domains i look after, there is a subdomain in another country or mail is handled by a server that is not the one where the related website is hosted). Namecheap (in the US) offers the same kind of tool, so i deal with them a lot when it comes to using common TLDs.

@yuli

@Charlie Phillips

The links to Taiwan-based domain registrars and webhosting quoted in this thread are the worst web pages I’ve ever seen in 22 years of web surfing. I’m flabbergasted.

That sounds interesting (in a way). What would you say is the problem (if any)? Page design? Service offerings?

Well, the service you recommended four years ago appears to be non-existent now. For me that’s a serious issue.

Bad web design from a B2B company offering web hosting and domain name services is a good sign the operators are in the wrong business.