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Admin Tools

#12607 Geographic Blocking for Specific Pages

Posted in ‘Admin Tools for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Environment Information

Joomla! version
n/a
PHP version
n/a
Admin Tools version
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Latest post by on Thursday, 12 July 2012 18:00 CDT

user60941
Mandatory information about my setup:

Have I read the related troubleshooter articles above before posting (which pages?)? Yes
Have I searched the tickets before posting? Yes
Have I read the documentation before posting (which pages?)? Yes
Joomla! version: (2.5.4)
PHP version: (5.3)
MySQL version: (5.0)
Host: (GoDaddy)
Admin Tools version: (2.2.6)

This is not an issue, but a question. Can I ban geographic blocks of IPs from entering specific pages of my site as opposed to a site-wide ban?

Thank you very much!

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
No, that's not possible. This has to do with the fact that Joomla! doesn't have a single URL scheme, meaning that one page can be accessible for multiple URLs. For instance, all of the following could lead to the same page:
http://www.example.com/index.php?option=com_foobar&id=15&Itemid=7
http://www.example.com/index.php?Itemid=7
http://www.example.com/foobars/1-some-category/15-my-item-alias
http://www.example.com/foobars/1-some-category/15-my-item-alias.html
http://www.example.com/foobars/1-some-category/15-fake-the-alias-it-still-works
http://www.example.com/foobars/you/dont/say/this/still/works/15-my-item-alias
http://www.example.com/foobars/you/dont/say/this/still/works/15-even-that-would-work
http://www.example.com/foobars/15

It all has to do with how Joomla! expands URLs internally and how each component's router works. Add a SEF component and it gets even worse. Therefore it's impossible to positively and indisputably identify a specific page in a unique way. And that's exactly what makes per-page features impossible to create, at least in a way that's user friendly and watertight.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

user60941
What if it is a SEF URL such as www.example.com/signup (no suffix)? Can I block access to, even if not 100%, for IPs of specific countries.This is not a security measure as much as a website strategy.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
This is still not possible. Besides, Geographic Blocking is as good as no blocking. Do you know what I'm doing when I can't access a site? I find a free proxy server on the country which is allowed to access the site and use it. The only reason I have GeoBlocking in there is that there are people who don't want to hear me when I tell them how pointless that is. Creating a very complex feature where you would see the entire country / continent list for individual URLs (bad UI) and have the Admin Tools plugin check if each URL being accessed appears on that list of URLs (slows down the site) is out of the question. It would create a bad interface, slow down the site unnecessarily and lead to increased support requests from people who don't understand that content in Joomla! can have multiple URLs. All that for a form of protection that's trivial to work around. No, that's clearly a waste of time.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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