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Does this plugin also work with IPv6?

No not yet. Maxmind has a GeoIPv6 database though just no support for PHP yet. And as my blog is also reachable on IPv6 I might incoporate this database as soon this is possible.

However: We need more IPv6 out there so please DO ask your hosting provider for IPv6!

How can I get a new version of the GeoIP database?

Since version 1.0.4 you can press the "Download new GeoIP database" from the admin page to download a new version of the database. You do not need to download it more than once a month since the lite database is only updated once a month.

You can also remove the file GeoIP.dat from the plugin directory and after removal go to the settings page of this plugin. When it sees the GeoIP database is missing it will try to download it for you.

However you can also download the GeoIP database yourself from Maxmind and overwrite the existing database.

Maxmind updates the GeoLite database every month.

Help it gives some error about not being able to download the GeoIP database?

Follow the instructions on screen. It will probably tell you that you have to manually download the GeoIP database from Maxmind from the following url:

http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCountry/GeoIP.dat.gz

It will also give you the location it expects the GeoIP.dat file. So go ahead and download it and unzip the file to this specific location.

How come that I still see visitors from countries that I blocked in Statpress or other statistics software?

It’s true that you might see hits from countries that you have blocked in your statistics software. That is the way it works, certain plugins may be run before iQ Block Country is run so it may log visitors to pages. This however does not mean this plugin does not work, it just means somebody tried to access a certain page or pages and that that fact is logged.

If you are worried this plugin does not work you could try to block your own country and afterwards visit your frontend website and see if it actually works. Also if you have access to the logfiles of the webserver that hosts your website you can see that these visitors are actually denied with a HTTP error 403.

Why does downloading the GeoIP.dat.gz fail?

For instance Maxmind limits the number of downloads per day. They probably do this by IP address so if you or somebody else who has a site at the same server your site is running on already downloaded the new database you may be blocked for 24 hours by MaxMind. No worries try a day later again.

Other possible faults are your webhosting company not allowing downloads on HTTP port 80.

If your download fails try to download it from home or work and upload it via FTP/sFTP to the location that is displayed.