CountryLock vs Geolocation IP Detection

CountryLock provides a simple, lightweight way to allow or block countries from accessing your WordPress site. It’s designed to be “set it and forget it” with no upsells, ads, or complex configurations. ✨ Key Features Master Toggle: Enable or disable the firewall with a single click. Allowed Countries List: Specify which two-letter country codes (e.g., US, CA) are allowed. Everyone else is blocked. Admin Bypass: Logged-in administrators can always bypass the block (toggleable). IP Allowlist: A simple list of IPs or CIDR ranges (like 123.45.67.89 or 10.0.0.0/8) that are always allowed. Block Logging: See which countries and IPs are being blocked (toggleable). Zero-Lookup Detection: Automatically uses Cloudflare (HTTP_CF_IPCOUNTRY) and other common server-level GEO headers for instant decisions with zero performance impact. Remote Lookup: As a fallback, it can query an external service (ipapi.co) if no headers are found. External Services This plugin uses one external service as a fallback to determine a visitor’s country if no local GEO headers (like those from Cloudflare or a server-level GeoIP module) are present. Service: ipapi.co What it’s used for: To look up the country of origin for a visitor’s IP address. Data Sent: The visitor’s IP address is sent to the service. This happens only if the “Use remote lookup if no geo headers” setting is enabled AND no local GeoIP headers are detected. Service Policies: Terms of Service Privacy Policy

Provides geographic information detected by an IP adress. This can be used in themes or other plugins, as a shortcode, or via CSS body classes. The city & country names are translated in different languages (supported languages). Features: You can use one of these data sources (see comparison): Free (default source): HostIP.info (IPv4 only) Free with registration: Maxmind GeoIP2 Lite City, automatically updated weekly Commercial: Maxmind GeoIP2 City or Maxmind GeoIP2 Country Commercial Web-API: Maxmind GeoIP2 Precision (City, Country or Insights) Hosting-Provider dependent: Cloudflare or Amazon AWS CloudFront (Country) Free or Commercial Web-API: Ipstack Commercial Web-API via AWS Marketplace: Fastah Provides these 5 functions (see API Documentation): geoip_detect2_get_info_from_ip($ip, $locales = array('en'), $options = array()): Lookup Geo-Information of the specified IP geoip_detect2_get_info_from_current_ip($locales = array('en'), $options = array()): Lookup Geo-Information of the current website user geoip_detect2_get_current_source_description(...): Return a human-readable label of the currently chosen source. geoip_detect2_get_external_ip_adress(): Fetch the internet adress of the webserver geoip_detect2_get_client_ip(): Get client IP (even if it is behind a reverse proxy) For the property names, see the results of a specific IP in the wordpress backend (under Tools > Geolocation IP Detection). You can include these properties into your posts and pages by using the shortcode [geoip_detect2 property="country.name" default="(country could not be detected)" lang="en"] (where ‘country.name’ can be one of the other property names as well, and ‘default’ and ‘lang’ are optional). You can show or hide content by using a shortcode [geoip_detect2_show_if country="FR, DE" not_city="Berlin"]TEXT[/geoip_detect2_show_if]. See Shortcode Documentation. When enabled on the options page, it adds CSS classes to the body tag such as geoip-province-HE, geoip-country-DE and geoip-continent-EU. If you are using a page cache, it is recommended to use the AJAX mode (see AJAX) When enabled on the options page, the client IP respects a reverse proxy of the server. If you are using Contact Form 7, you can use these shortcodes: A select input with all countries, the detected country being selected by default: [geoip_detect2_countries mycountry] A text input that is pre-filled with the detected city (or other property): [geoip_detect2_text_input city property:city lang:fr id:id class:class default:Paris] Geolocation information for the email text: [geoip_detect2_user_info] If you are using WP Forms, you can use this shortcode: Geolocation information for the email text: [geoip_detect2_user_info] Together with SVG Flags you can show the flag of the detected country: [geoip_detect2_current_flag] (see documentation) See Documentation for more info. How can I use these functions? You could choose the currency of the store based on the country name You could pre-fill the shipping country You could show the store nearest to your customer You show or hide content specific to a geographic target group Etc. … You tell me! I’m rather curious what you’ll do with this plugin! Be careful to comply to the applicable laws. For example Regulation (EU) 2018/302 … If you need to get the user’s timezone, it is more accurate to use JS solutions. System Requirements: You will need at least PHP 7.2.5 . Also, if you use the plugin WooCommerce, you’ll need at least WooCommerce 3.9.0 . GDPR: See Is this plugin GDPR-compliant? This extension is “charity-ware”. If you are happy with it, please leave a tip for the benefit of this charity. (See FAQ for more infos.) Here are other ways to contribute to the development of this plugin. This product can provide GeoLite2 data created by MaxMind, available from http://www.maxmind.com. Troubleshooting Does geoip_detect2_get_info_from_current_ip() return the same country, regardless of where you are visiting the site from? Maybe your server has a reverse proxy configured. You can check this: Go to the options page and look for “reverse proxy”. Are there 2 IPs listed there? If so, which one corresponds to your public IP? Or maybe you are using a site cache plugin. Then enable the option Disable caching a page that contains a shortcode or API call to geo-dependent functions. More Troubleshooting Hints