Having lived for many years in Shanghai and being asked the same questions over and over again, I decided to write a series of articles with tips for living here. As a starter, a list of sites which should answer all your questions and cover most of the things i may write about in my articles later.

Community, Directories

• Shanghai Expat - Number one expat community in Shanghai, you can get most of your questions answered here and more. Their directory sucks however.
• Schanghai.com - German expat-community in Shanghai and China
• SmartShanghai - Great directory of food, pubs, clubs, etc, and a community.
• City Weekend - Directory of everything, their magazine is available for free in many places.
• That's Shanghai - Another magazine and directory, I read the mag, but don't use their site.
• Shanghai Eats - Food directory.
• Live in Shanghai - Info on many things, i never used that site. Looks informative

Food Delivery

• Pizza Hut Delivery - I suggest you get somebody to sign up for you, since the address entry is not so trivial (bad translations)
• Papa John's Pizza - Quick delivery, much better than Pizza Hut. You need to find the closest shop here and see if they can take the order in English.
• Hello Pizza - "Same ingredients as the pizza market leaders!" :-o

• Sherpa - Oldest one, and probably the most expensive one too, great food though.
• Mealbay - Haven't tried them, similar to Sherpa.
• Dial A Meal - Haven't tried them, similar to Sherpa, don't know any of their restaurants either :-P

Online Shops

• Books Direct - English language books in China, free delivery.
• Newegg China - Electronics, Chinese only site
  
• Taobao - forget ebay, Chinese only site
• Amazon.cn - Amazon's attempt to enter the Chinese market, Chinese only site
  

Language

• ChinesePod - I quite like these podcasts, not only focusing on learning Chinese but also making you understand the culture
• Melnyks - Similar to Chinese pod, spoken by a Canadian. (I think that guy has terrible accent, but some people think, he's the best thing since sliced bread.)

News, Blogs

• Danwei - Media news in china, may be not interesting for some
• ShanghaiBites Food blog, did not update it for few weeks.
• Likealocal.cn - Another local food blog. From personal experience I would not recommend trying any food from roadside stalls, but otherwise it should be save :-)
• Shanghai Daily - English language newspaper in Shanghai. Forget China Daily

Maps, Metro

• SmartShanghai's Downtown Map and Metro - Interactive maps of shanghai and the metro.
• Explore Shanghai - Excellent interactive map of Shanghai Metro, drag between stations to get travel time and price, click on a stop for more information. The map of downtown is not bad either, the whole site looks very promising, I hope they won't shut it down any time soon.
• Google Ditu - Chinese only maps. Not really useful if you can't read and write Chinese characters.

Hotels, Flights, Trains

• CTrip - I use this to book china flights and hotels
• China Train Schedule - Can't vouch for their accuracy, never took train here.
• Cheap Budget Hotels - List of cheap motel chains in shanghai, I have stayed in many of them. Good choice if you are on budget. (The beds will be most likely (quite) hard, to suit the Chinese taste)

Jobs
This three links are all you need for your job search. If you are looking for a specific company, you may want to try going to that company's website directly. For internships there are dedicated websites (can't think of any), also your country's chamber of commerce in shanghai may have a list of internships and jobs available.

• Zhaopin.com
• 51job.com
• ChinaHR

Visa, Housing

• Emoo.net - I get my Z-Visas done through them, saves you a lot of time and pain. They also provide other services which I have not tried.
• SmartShanghai Housing - One of few housing links i will include here. Usually you will get ripped off or end up paying far too much for an apartment in a foreigner ghetto. Find a local to help you out if you don't want to pay more than RMB 6000 or don't feel like getting ripped off.