Adding Geolocation to TWiki

TWiki is continuing its path of innovation: TWiki has now plugin for geolocation. Geolocation is the identification of the real-world geographic location of an Internet-connected computer, mobile device, website visitor or other. IP address geolocation data can include information such as country, region, city, postal/zip code, latitude, longitude and timezone.^{Ref. Wikipedia}

The recently released GeoLookupPlugin can be used to retrieve geolocation by IP address or domain name. This includes latitude/longitude, city, region, country name and code, postal code, metropolitan code and telephone area code. The plugin uses free geolocation data provided by MaxMind. It seems to be reasonable accurate for the USA, but I have found it quite unusable for Europe and other parts of the world. They offer a subscription for more accurate data.

What can you do with geolocation? MaxMind mentions fraud detection, ad serving, traffic analytics, content customization and proxy detection. What can you do with geolocation in TWiki? Several things come to mind:

1. Where are people who register in TWiki?

As a TWiki administrator, you can get location information of people registering in TWiki. In twiki/templates/registernotifyadmin.tmpl write this:

%WIKINAME% has been registered with %EMAILADDRESS%, %REMOTE_ADDR%, %GEOLOOKUP{%REMOTE_ADDR%}%

2. Where am I connecting to the internet?

You can show visitors where their ISP connects to the internet. For example, write this:

http://maps.google.com/maps?z=12&ll=%ENCODE{%GEOLOOKUP{"%REMOTE_ADDR%" format="$latitude,$longitude"}%}%

to get this link: http://maps.google.com/maps?z=12&ll=48.8582%2c2.3387

3. Interactive Google map showing geolocation by IP address or domain name

Geolocation by IP Address or Domain Name
Enter IP address or domain name: • City: • Region: • Country: France • Postal code: • Telephone area code: • Longitude: 2.3387 • Latitude: 48.8582 Note: Geolocation data seems to be accurate only for North America	View Larger Map

Would you like to show this interactive map on your own TWiki? Install the GeoLookupPlugin, copy the raw text into the clipboard, and paste it in raw edit mode into your TWiki page.

There are other usage scenarios for geolocation in TWiki. I am interested in learning what you come up with. Ideas? Please add a comment to share them with the TWiki community.

Comments

I added a new blog post Free Geolocation Lookup - Where is This Website or IP Address?. It contains an advanced geolocation lookup form for multiple IP addresses. The blog post also explains in detail how this works using SpreadSheetPlugin formulas, which is a good learning opportunity for advanced TWiki application programming.

-- Peter Thoeny - 2012-08-14

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