Honeill Visitor Country Detection

Honeill Visitor Country Detection detects a visitor's country (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, e.g. GB) from their IP address using MaxMind's GeoLite2 database, and exposes it through a single WordPress filter so your theme or plugin can use it with no hard dependency. The GeoLite2 database is not bundled — MaxMind's license does not allow redistribution. Instead you enter your own free MaxMind license key once on the settings screen. The plugin then:

• downloads the GeoLite2 country database immediately,
• stores it in wp-content/uploads (so it survives plugin updates),
• and refreshes it automatically every week via WP-Cron.

You never download or upload a database by hand. Use it in your code $country = apply_filters( 'honeill_visitor_country_detection_country_code', '' ); Returns a two-letter country code, or an empty string when it can't be determined (local IP, missing database, etc.) — your code decides the fallback. Results are cached per IP, so it's cheap to call on every request. Prefer REST? GET /wp-json/honeill-visitor-country-detection/v1/country returns { "country": "GB" } for the caller. This product includes GeoLite2 Data created by MaxMind, available from https://www.maxmind.com. This plugin is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed, or sponsored by MaxMind, Inc. GeoIP and GeoLite2 are trademarks of MaxMind, Inc.

1. Upload the honeill-visitor-country-detection folder to /wp-content/plugins/, or install the ZIP via Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
2. Activate the plugin.
3. Create a free MaxMind account and generate a license key (Account → Manage License Keys): https://www.maxmind.com/en/geolite2/signup
4. Go to Settings → Honeill Visitor Country Detection, paste your license key, and click Save & download database.
5. That's it — the database downloads now and auto-updates weekly.

Advanced: instead of the settings field you can define the key in wp-config.php with define( 'HONEILL_VISITOR_COUNTRY_DETECTION_LICENSE_KEY', 'your-key' ); to keep it out of the database.

1.2.4

• Per-IP lookup results are now cached with the object cache API instead of transients. Spoofed X-Forwarded-For values could previously create unbounded per-IP transient rows in the options table.

1.2.3

• Renamed the plugin to "Honeill Visitor Country Detection" (slug honeill-visitor-country-detection). No functional changes; filter, REST namespace, options, and constant names now use the new prefix.

1.2.2

• Tidied the plugin description (now mentions the REST endpoint).

1.2.1

• "Remove key" is now a button instead of a checkbox. The settings screen also documents the REST endpoint.

1.2.0

• License key field is now write-only and masked — the saved key is never rendered back to the browser. Added a "Remove the saved key" option.
• REST endpoint now sends no-cache headers so a per-visitor result is never cached by a CDN or page cache.

1.1.0

• Added a REST endpoint: GET /wp-json/honeill-visitor-country-detection/v1/country returns the caller's country code.

1.0.0

• Initial release: country detection via the honeill_visitor_country_detection_country_code filter, license-key-based download, weekly auto-update, and a settings screen.