Geotargeting by GeoIP integration

This plugin uses Maxmind's GeoIP database to look up a visitor's country depending on his IP-address.
You may use this e.g. to display specific content or advertisements depending on the geographical location of your visitors.

Installation:

1. Download geoip.inc PHP module and save it in your forum's includes/ directory.
2. Download the latest GeoLite Country Database GeoIP.dat.gz, uncompress it (gunzip or evil ones like WinRAR) and save the uncompressed file under includes/GeoIP.dat (you can change the location of this file in your vBulletin Options).
   You should update this file once in a while.
3. Make sure to have plugin system enabled.
4. Install product mip-geoiptracker-1.0.xml

Usage:
Use $bbuserinfo[country] (or $vbulletin->userinfo[country]) in your code, your templates, etc.
Have a look on the plugin sources and on GeoIP PHP API if you're interested in getting infos other than the country code.

Changes:

• 1.0.1 --> 1.0.2
  Fixed bug with geoipdatfile setting not being included in product.
• 1.0 --> 1.0.1
  Basic caching is done using cookies.

This plugin is likely to work also with commercial versions of Maxmind GeoIP databases, which would - with minor tweaks - allow resolving a user's location down to region and even city levels.

On high-traffic sites, I recommend using GeoIP PHP extension or Apache module instead of this plain PHP code.

Please note that I don't give free support for this plugin, as the vBulletin part is too simple and the rest is code from Maxmind.

[Thomas P]

Is it possible to block certain IPs based on their geolocation using this hack?

[imported_silkroad]

Originally Posted by Psionic Vision

Nevermind, it's based on DNS resolver... And DNS queries may cause page load delays, although not necessarily server load.
Bleh. Not interesting.

No, this is wrong.

This program is based on IP address which comes "without network load cost" from the HTTP $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] global PHP var.

Basically, the server simply takes the REMOTE_ADDR (IP address) and queries a file on the same server (can download file for free) and returns country information.

This is a great feature for many forums that would like to display different content to the user based on country.

[imported_silkroad]

Originally Posted by Thomas P

Is it possible to block certain IPs based on their geolocation using this hack?

Yes, you can easily do this, but you need to write the extra code yourself.

[imported_silkroad]

Originally Posted by Tom Freeman

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but does this mod also allow me to geolocate forums. Therefore only showing certain forums to certain users based on their geographic location?

Thanks,
Tom

Yes, it does. Basically, with a bit of writing code, you can do "just about anything" based on Country (or even City).

For many users, it might be easier just to install this PHP extension (since this mod is not supported anymore):

http://us3.php.net/manual/en/book.geoip.php

[imported_silkroad]

Ah, we found it was easier to install Apache2 mod_geoip. A plugin for this is not really necessary, FYI. So, I recommend mod_geoip for this because it is easy to install and runs great.

[imported_silkroad]

We have integrated GeoIP into vBulletin very easily using mod_geoip.

Details on upgrading mod_geoip here

What we have done so far, is use mod_geoip for geo-targetting.

In addition, we made a simple change to the navbar template to say:

Welcome from Country_Name, User_Name

instead of the standard, Welcome, User_Name

Details on vB navbar feature here.

[clubvr4]

Has anyone ported this to vb4 yet?

[Dave234]

Does this work with vbulletin 4.1.11? Does it work with Amazon Associates?