Working on a Geo-Targeting Script/Plugin - Suggestions, Feedback etc

[DealerDan]

Hey guys,

Currently working on a geo-targeting script with my programmer that I'd like to get some feedback/suggestions on. It will be initially a wordpress plugin, and will be focused on in-content geo-targeting. As far as I know there is nothing like this currently available, although if there is please let me know so I can save lots of time

Okay so lets say your poker site has an article on Omaha tournament strategy. At the end of the article, you'd like to do a call to action like:

"if you want to practice this strategy, the best poker room for Omaha tournaments is Tower Poker."

Unfortunately Tower is non-US. So if you have any US visitors that call to action is completely useless. So you may write instead:

"If you want to practice this strategy, the best poker room for Omaha tournaments for non-US players is Tower Poker, while Americans can play at Pokerstars."

Now I personally hate calls to action like that. I think it can confuse some visitors, and really loses its effect. Now you could just promote Pokerstars at the end of the article and be done with it, however if you only promote rooms that accept US players then you are severely limiting yourself. Plus what if they accept US players but don't accept Canadians? Then you're promoting a room to any Canadian visitors that they can't play at, which just doesn't make any sense.

Our plugin looks to simplify that. This is what you would write using our plugin:

"If you want to practice this strategy, the best poker room for Omaha tournaments is [geo-XXX]"

XXX = a variable that you set yourself. Let's say "omahatournaments".

Now in the backend, you would set that up. You would create a new listing for the variable "omahatournaments". You would then set a default poker room that you want to use for that function call. However you can then set up a list of country specific calls. So it could be:

Default Room: Tower Poker
If US visitor: Pokerstars
If Canadian visitor: Hollywood Poker
If Russian visitor: Red Star

And so on and so forth. In the above instance if a French visitor for example visits the site, they'd see the Tower Poker link.

So yeah - that's the plugin in a nutshell basically. As I mentioned above, I'm checking to make sure there's nothing in place like this already. I'd also love any suggestions & feedback on this too, and anything else you would like included.

Cheers

[Mike]

I built something like this already. pm'ing you now.

[Frost]

Hey Mike, what are you using to do the geo lookup?

[Mike]

MaxMind - GeoLite Country | Open Source IP Address to Country Database, super easy script involved, like 4 lines of php in an include file and then 1-2 lines of code wherever you want it to geotarget. Making it into a wordpress plugin is a bit more challenging but definitely a good idea.

[GoodKarmaKid]

Sounds great.

I know your not supposed to charge for plugins on Wordpress because of the GPL, but I'd gladly pay $50-$100 or whatever for that type of plugin.

Jason

[Jibninjas]

Sounds pretty cool.

As a slight derail, what are you using to find and replace the variables, regular expressions?

[Mike]

what are you using to find and replace the variables

what variables?

[Jibninjas]

what variables?

"If you want to practice this strategy, the best poker room for Omaha tournaments is [geo-XXX]"

XXX = a variable that you set yourself. Let's say "omahatournaments".

These? Isn't what this module doing search and replacing basically?

[Mike]

Oh, I think you are confusing Dan's OP with my comment on the plugin that I created. Either way, wordpress has a shortcode api built in that handles this for you.

Shortcode API WordPress Codex

If I had to do this by hand or implement it in a stand alone (non wp plugin) version, it would be regex (or just hard coded).

[Spry]

I would also purchase this plugin and or invest in the development if needed. Just let me know DD.