Support

I want to clarify something.

The license change in MaxMind doesn't make it impossible to have a geographic IP blocking extension for Joomla. It only makes it impractical. Our core value is making software that's useful and easy to use. The new MaxMind GeoLite2 Country licensing restrictions were not exactly conducive to this goal.

For starters, it did not allow us to bundle the database file with the plugin. This means that installing the plugin would do nothing. You'd have to do a rather involved manual process before it would yield any results. Yes, of course we can document it and show messages on the screen but our experience is that the people who are most likely to berate us for a problem that's not of our making are also the people who are unlikely to read any of that.

Which brings us to the biggest problem. MaxMind no longer offers an open download server for the GeoLite2 Country database. You have to register with them, even though it's for free. Then you need to log into their site to download the country database. Afterwards you need to manually extract and upload that file to your server. This is similar to what the manual database update process had been in the past. We already have the experience to know that this is extremely confusing to our clients and makes them frustrated with us even though we are neither MaxMind nor do we have anything to do with their host or their FTP/SFTP/File Manager application.

In the end of the day, trying to keep the integration in Admin Tools would lead to far more disgruntled users than removing it. Moreover, having already had the experience with the people that needed to do the manual update process, we also know that it would cause our support time (for things outside our control!) to skyrocket, depriving us from the time necessary to actually develop the software and the features that matter most. In short, it was a losing proposition.

This does not, however, mean that it's impossible for someone else to publish software that needs a massive involvement from the client. It's the prerogative. There are, in fact, a few extensions for Joomla that offer either or both of these options. I cannot recommend any of them for obvious reasons. You can always do a quick search engine query for "geoblock Joomla" to see what are your options or take a look at the Joomla Extensions Directory. They all boil down to either having to manually install and update the database file or using a paid third party service (which increases your page load time and is generally a bad idea but, hey, at least there's that option).

No insult was taken. I explained the thought process behind the decision.

As you discovered looking at the JED, there are basically two bad options available to you:

• The Hard, Fast and Expensive Way. You subscribe to MaxMind's free of charge GeoLite2 Country database and you deploy it manually to all of your client site's every time it changes. Essentially, you need to pay someone to do that or write automation to get it done. It's really expensive.
• The Easy, Slow and Expensive Way. You pay rent to someone else who does that on their server to allow you to use their server. Your sites are slowed and you're bleeding money,

The thing is, these are all the options you can legally have! I'd have loved to create my own update serer for MaxMind's database and deliver it to my client automatically. I know how to do it -- this is how we're delivering our own software. I could charge you a small, flat fee to cover the bandwidth expenses. However, MaxMind's licensing terms make it impossible.

Hopefully, some type of replacement will come out soon as I'm pretty sure this is an issue with a lot of developers.

I wouldn't hold my breath. Compiling this information requires collating a wealth of data. That's an obscenely expensive proposition. Moreover, it hits the same legal issues MaxMind hit, i.e. privacy legislation makes it mandatory to remove information from people who exercise their right to be forgotten. This means that the database MUST be updated everywhere in the world at pretty much the same time. The only two ways to do that is to either bind people by a restrictive license which makes it illegal for them not to update the database (meaning that a site that no longer pays you maintenance fee and is a couple weeks out of date on the geo IP database can be potentially hit with a 20 million Euro fine) or by not distributing the database but setting up a service instead (which means that it costs $$$ to operate at scale without significant lag).

So we're back to square one. An unintended consequence of privacy legislation is that IP geolocation is no longer practical but for the sites that can afford it.