Forum Display Enhancements - GLA - Geographic Location Awareness for vBulletin

*** Staff note: The author of this modification has passed away in a diving accident. We wish his family all strength in dealing with this traggic issue. ***

GLA - Geographic Location Awareness for vBulletin

What does this do?

GLA adds an additional layer of information into your vBulletin site (visitors' country name). GLA doesn't output anything to the user, or change any display on your forum, it simply adds additional information which is then available to other programs or mods.

But what can I use it for?

There are many applications, but the main idea is that this mod enables other mod writers to very easily add location awareness functions into their own mods. If you were thinking of writing a mod to display a person's registration country in the postbit, it's now very easy to do.

Why should I download and install this?

Unless you are also going to install one of the other mods which requires GLA, there isn't much point. If you are a developer, you might install this to add functionality to your own mods.

How will I update this?

Easy - you can update the database used for matching country names to IP addresses yourself - it's very easy. Full instructions are provided in the install.txt file inside the zip file.

How do I install?

Download the zip file and look for install.txt. But basically it's easy - upload the contents of the upload folder to your forum directory, and import the enclosed .xml file. That's it.

How do I know if it is working?

A test script is provided that will test every aspect of your GLA installation to inform you of any potential problems. Please see the installation instructions for information about this test script.

What about flags?

This includes flags, meaning that other mods won't have to package flags. You can change the flags if you like, instructions are provided.



How about a quick summary of features?

• Fast - GLA adds almost no overhead. This is important for big sites. Only a single query is executed each time a session is created
• Transparent - new variables are automatically available to any part of your site
• Updateable - you can update the database yourself
• Free - a free database is used
• Accurate - the database provider claims 98% accuracy
• Configuration - absolutely nothing to configure for this mod (since it just provides data to other mods)
• Extendible - GLA may encourage other mod developers to add location features. Why not ask the author of your favourite mod to use GLA? Were you thinking of making a mod which uses location data, but didn't know how? GLA solves the problem for you - now all you need to do is read a variable
• Easy developer information - hints and tips are provided with the zip file to make life easier for developers

Is there a list of mods that currently use GLA?



Yes, a list will be maintained here. Please let me know if you find a mod which requires GLA that isn't listed, so I can add it. The current list of GLA mods is as follows:

• Country Display for Who's Online
• Check Proxy RBL on Registration (unsupported, hack for an existing mod)

Before posting on this thread:

Please post on this thread only for issues relating to GLA itself. If you have an issue that concerns a mod that uses GLA, please post on the appropriate thread for that mod. If you have an issue which concerns the underlying functionality of GLA itself, then post here.

Even though this is a required mod from another mod and may be fairly boring, please click install if you are using it. Support requests from people who have not clicked install may not be answered.

No screen shots for this mod, since there's nothing to see.

Version history
1.0 (07.07.07) Initial version

[Cyburbia]

Yikes! Some of the country names in the database are wrong!

The biggie: - Serbia and Montenegro was formerly in Yugoslavia, not Czechoslovakia

[mfyvie]

Which database are you referring to? The one that ships with GLA 1.0, or the new one that I posted a while back? Starting with GLA 1.1 (not yet released) I'm using the new database and stripping out all those extra comments so that there will be use the country name. Those comments come from the registrars, and in many cases they can't spell either (formally rather than formerly for example).

[racechick20]

Installed and eagerly awaiting the postbit mod you have just finished. Thank you!

[BigDog56]

EDIT: Figured it out.

[mfyvie]

EDIT: BigDog56 - since you've now edited out your original question, my message below doesn't make sense to anyone, but I'm going to leave it there anyway.

Originally Posted by BigDog56

ok, I'm going to assume you have actually copied the files into the correct location for your additional styles (as per instructions) and that you've run the test/verification script to test, and that that it has reported to you that it can't find the flags for the additional styles, and that you've followed the tips that the test script gives you to help you resolve the problem? In that case - at which stage do you think is the problem is occurring and which steps have you taken to try and resolve it? So far we've had very few cases like this that haven't been correctly picked up by the test script, so I'm curious.

[tekguru]

Installed here too and working perfectly!

I must admit thoguh I too am looking forward to the new version and that PostBit mod!

Any ETA at all?

[mfyvie]

Originally Posted by tekguru

Installed here too and working perfectly!

I must admit thoguh I too am looking forward to the new version and that PostBit mod!

Any ETA at all?

It's basically done, but I have to enhance GLA itself a bit first (version 1.1). It's in the queue - I have some other work to clear first. I'd rather make sure everything works the way it should first time rather than have to fix problems later.

[tekguru]

Not a problem, we'll all have to learn to be patient

[tekguru]

Any further update on the progress at all?

[mfyvie]

Originally Posted by tekguru

Any further update on the progress at all?

Sorry, have had some personal issues and finding it difficult to focus on programming tasks or dedicate the time to it that it needs.

GLA 1.1 is probably about 50% complete at the moment, though I haven't worked on it for some weeks. Right now the newer update is automatically installed and updated each week. There are more internal functions allowing other developers to make use of some more stuff (though I note that there hasn't exactly been a rush of people writing applications that make use of GLA).

Probably the biggest component that I have yet to add is a separate table which stores admin defined exceptions to the current database. These will be entered via the admincp, but it needs a form, a way of looking at the existing entries, deleting entries, etc. Could end up being a bit more work than I bargained for. Also - there are 20 or so missing flags in 1.0 that need to be redrawn to fit with the current flag set. So far nobody has volunteered to do this work, so I'll probably have to end up doing this myself which will take additional time.

So sorry - can't give you a date for this yet.