Extension Country Blocker (version 1.3.0)

The extension allows the shop owner to deny access to the website for visitors from specified countries. You can chose as many countries as you like.

Usage Examples

Close access to your website for customers that are trying to pay with stolen credit cards

It is a common case when most attempts to pay with stolen credit cards are made from the same country. However, it is too tiresome to monitor and block these IP addresses manually. If you aren't working in the region the attempts are coming from, it is easier to block access to website for the whole country.

Allow access to the website only from specific countries

If you're working in only 2 or 3 countries, it is possible that you want to relieve visitors from other countries of wasting their time on choosing a product and trying to order it. In this case you can allow visiting your website only from these countries and all other people won't be able to access the store.

However, it is worth mentioning that search engines are visitors too. So, if you want your website to be indexed by search engines, you should allow access for countries they are based in (usually it is USA).

Country data sources

To find what country IP address is from, the extension needs a data source. At the moment extension supports two types of sources

Binary GeoIP file from MaxMind

MaxMind company (http://www.maxmind.com) provides a vast amount of geolocation services. This product includes GeoLite2 data created by MaxMind, available at http://www.maxmind.com
To use this data source, you have to download this file and upload it to your server. Since data will be physically on your server, this method is the fastest.

SpamEatingMonkey DNSBL

Spam Eating Monkey service (http://spameatingmonkey.com/) provides the ability to check IP addresses in real time. This extension will use it to find the country this IP address is from.
This method doesn't require any settings on the website's side, however this check method is the slowest. It is recommended to use it only if you have some troubles with other methods.

SpamEatingMonkey DNSBL peculiarities:
The check is performed by using DNS servers. Some public DNS servers (e.g. google DNS 8.8.8.8) don't return any result, so the extension won't be able to find the country. In this case the extension will display a notification about an unsupported DNS server under the admin panel menu.

Technical details

• Open source code
• The extension's code conforms to Magento development standards
• The extension is available in English and Russian. Additional translations can be added by users.
• To use the data source automatic update feature, there cron must be set on your website.
• Technical information for developers