Geo Targetting with PHP

[TheShortStack]

Hi there,

I'm looking to do a bit of basic Geo Targetting in a straight forward PHP site (so no WP plugins allowed).

I've been trying to get an idea of the functions that I'm going to need by looking through PHP.net.

I've come across the function geoip_country_name_by_name()

Is this going to do the job correctly for me though? Or should I be using another function to determine's a vistor's geographical location.

Also, is it possible to tell a user's operating system through PHP as well?

Cheers,

[GregW]

Hi there,

I'm looking to do a bit of basic Geo Targetting in a straight forward PHP site (so no WP plugins allowed).

I've been trying to get an idea of the functions that I'm going to need by looking through PHP.net.

I've come across the function geoip_country_name_by_name()

Is this going to do the job correctly for me though? Or should I be using another function to determine's a vistor's geographical location.

I'm pretty sure you need to use a database (like Maxmind) along with some PHP to use geotargeting, not just PHP on its own.

I'm not great with PHP though so I can't expand on that.

Also, is it possible to tell a user's operating system through PHP as well?

This is what I started with:

Detect operating system from user agent string (PHP Code) • Geekpedia

[ih82lose]

As far as I know you can get the IP (I used function getip() in my script) from your visitor, but then have to find location from that.

I used:
IP address geolocation SQL database :: IPInfoDB

I created a geo-target script for a dating site banner. I did this many months back, and decided not to use the code.

I dont remember clearly how I did it.

[Mike]

On maxmind's webste, download GeoIP.dat and geoip.inc. Since you already named one of their functions, I'll assume you did this already.

To get the country code (US, CAN, UK, etc), use the following code:

$gi = geoip_open("/your/absolute/path/to/GeoIP.dat",GEOIP_STANDARD);
global $country;
$country = geoip_country_code_by_addr($gi, $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
geoip_close($gi); 

The variable $country will contain the country code.

From there, you just use a simple if statement like:

if ($country == 'US') {
//US ONLY
} elseif ($country == 'UK') {
//UK ONLY
} else {
//EVERYONE ELSE
} 

[TheShortStack]

Thanks guys - I'll give it a go

[TheShortStack]

Ok, quick question about this.

Mike, when you say I need to put my absolute path to the GeoIP.dat - how does that work.

If the .dat file is installed on the root of onlinepoker.com, and I'm trying to insert the code into /include/header.php how does that translate into the PHP code?

Should the code read:

$gi = geoip_open("../GeoIP.dat",GEOIP_STANDARD); 

Any thoughts or suggestions would be really welcome given that that code seems to be giving me an error message