joomla:iplocation:documentation

Documentation of IP-Location for Joomla!

To access the settings of the IP-Location plugin, open the plugin settings in the Administrator of your Joomla Site using Extensions » Plugin Manager:





Locationing Method

Select the Method for the IP Locationing:

Remote Request using ipinfodb.com API

Queries the IpInfoDB.com site for the geolocation data. Only suggested for testing purposes.

Use Table in the Joomla Database

Uses the IpInfoDB.com Data imported into the Joomla! Database. This is the suggested setting for production use. You may need to import the IP Location Data as described in the Installation Procedures.

API Key

When using Remote Request using ipinfodb.com API register at www.ipinfodb.com to receive your own API Key and enter/paste it here. Remote requests without API Key will be rejected by the IPinfoDB service.
Alternatively you may import the IP Location data into your sites database when not using the Remote Request approach.

Precision

Allows to select between these types of precision when performing the location match for the IP Address:

Country Precision

Only determines the Country related to the accessing IP Address. With this precision there is no timezone being determined.

City Precision

Determines the City related to the accessing IP Address. This precision setting is required when wanting to have timezone data and for adapting the Joomla Timezone to the detected location.

Time Zone

Select if the Joomla! Timezone setting shall be adjusted based on the Location found for the IP Address of the current visitor:

Leave Joomla! Timezone unchanged

The Timezone set in your Joomla! Global Configuration is left unchanged.

Update Joomla! Timezone with Timezone for detected IP Location

The Timezone set in your Joomla! Global Configuration is adjusted for the Session of the current visitor, based on the IP Location detected for his Browser.

Page Redirect

Allows to redirect to Country or City pages of your content, if for the current requested page and the detected Geolocation a related page is found.

See Preparing Content for Location Redirects below on how to setup content for locations.

Disable Page Redirects based on the Location Data

No page redirects based on the IP Location data is performed.

Redirect to Page if content match for Location is found

Will perform a search on the current requested content page if there is a related page for the current Geolocation present in your content repository. This will redirect to that page if a Geolocation match is found.

Client IP Address for testing

Allows to enter any fully qualified IP Address to override the detected Browser IP Address. May be usefull during Development on your Joomla! Site or for testing purposes.

In case you want to test your site for accesses from different countries, we suggest to lookup the IP-Addresses associated with a Domain using WHOIS Lookups. And to enter the IP-Address here for testing your site for access from specific locations. Choose Domains from the Country with which you want to test IP-Location and its functions with your site.

Exclude IP Addresses from Locationing

Will not perform Redirects for the List of fully qualified IP Addresses entered here. One IP-Address per Row. May get used to exclude redirects for Search Engines.

Exclude User Agents from Locationing

Will not perform Redirects for the List of User Agent Strings entered here. One User Agent String per Row. Fully qualified Regular Expressions are allowed to be used here (e.g. /yahoo-[a-z]+/) or any String Expression. Any string expression will be matched case-insensitive against the User Agent string of the current client.

Take a look at http://www.user-agents.org when working with this configuration option.

Debug Mode

With Debug Mode set to On the extension will show the IP Location data detected for the current request. This may be helpfull for testing or setup of the extension on your site:

Preparing Content for Location Redirects

IP-Location allows to redirect content pages to nearer location matches. You may use this to display a content page differently for visitors of a specific country or city.

1. Prepare your default Content Page

Create a Content Page as used to in Joomla. Use the Alias to assign a unique alias for the page, this alias is later being used to correlate this page to the pages for specific Geolocations. First create a general page for all visitors from any location:

2. Customizing your default Content Page for a Geolocation

To make the previously general page customized to visitors from a specific Geolocation, create a new Content Page (or make a copy of the previous one). To make this page a Redirection Target for IP-Location (from the default general page created in Step 1), add the IP-Location data to the Alias in following order (separated by a hyphen) and priority:

  1. Country Code
  2. City
  3. ZIP or Postal Code



In our example the following Aliases would be related to the following locations:

we-are-volunteers-at            ... Page version for visitors located in Austria (Country Code 'AT')
we-are-volunteers-at-linz       ... Page version for visitors located in Austria (Country Code 'AT') and City 'Linz'
we-are-volunteers-at-linz-4020  ... Page version for visitors located in Austria (Country Code 'AT'), City 'Linz' and ZIP Code '4020'


So with the Page Redirects active, IP-Location will now be able to redirect the page with alias we-are-volunteers to a geolocated version for all visitors whose location has been determined as Austria, its City 'Linz' or its City 'Linz' and ZIP Code '4020'.

Any search for geolocated pages as redirection match is starting with Country, then City and then ZIP Code in that order. City Names and ZIP Codes are stripped by any spaces, e.g. “New York” will need to be newyork when used in the Articles alias.

Researching the IP-Location Database

As of January 2012 this function is deprecated, as the IPInfoDB service has seized to provide downloadable IP-Location data.

Use the Remote Request API access method to the IPInfoDB service instead.

When having imported the IP-Location Data into your sites Database, Show City Data and Show Country Data allow to research the data for Cities and Countries. You may use the shown IP-Addresses also for testing IP-Location with your site by simulating access from specific locations with the Client IP-Address for testing configuration option:


IP Addresses shown in the Country Data include the Subnetmask, ommit the Subnetmask when using these IP-Addresses for testing your site: