Geolocation is important, regardless of whether you are a marketer, online business owner, advertiser and so on. We need geolocation information to help us to learn more about our clients. For example, where are they coming from, what is their time zone, are they visiting via a proxy and many other reasons.

In this article, we will guide you on how to install IP2Location on a Debian platform and configure it to work with Nginx. At the end of this tutorial, you should be able to block or restrict users from a country from accessing your website by using IP2Location Nginx module and database.

This section teaches you on how to install the IP2Location Nginx module into Debian platform.

1. Make sure you have installed all required packages for development.

   apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
   apt-get install build-essential dh-autoreconf unzip

2. Create a working directory.
   mkdir ~/nginx-dev && cd ~/nginx-dev

3. Download the latest Nginx source code from http://nginx.org/en/download.html
   wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-VERSION.tar.gz

4. Decompress the package.
   tar xvfz nginx-*.tar.gz

5. Download latest IP2Location C library.
   wget https://github.com/chrislim2888/IP2Location-C-Library/archive/master.zip

6. Decompress downloaded package and install it to your system.
   unzip master.zip
cd IP2Location-C-Library-master
autoreconf -i -v --force
./configure
make
make install
cd ~/nginx-dev

7. Download and decompress IP2Location Nginx module.
   wget https://github.com/ip2location/ip2location-nginx/archive/master.zip
unzip master.zip

8. Go to Nginx source codes and start compilation.
   cd ~/nginx-dev/nginx-VERSION
./configure --add-module=ip2location-nginx-master
make
make install


IP2Location offers 5 free LITE databases and 25 commercial IP geolocation databases. Free database is less accurate comparing to commercial database.

1. Create new directory for IP2Location database.
   mkdir /etc/ip2location
cd /etc/ip2location

2. Go to https://lite.ip2location.com. Sign up an account for login and password.
3. Download and decompress the latest IP2Location LITE database.
4. 
http://download.ip2location.com/lite/IP2LOCATION-LITE-DB1.BIN.ZIP
unzip IP2LOCATION-LITE-DB1.BIN.ZIP


You need to configure Nginx to use IP2LOCATION module.

1. Edit
   
/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

2. Add following lines under `http` context:
   
http {
ip2location on;
ip2location_database /root/bin/DB1.BIN;
ip2location_reverse_proxy on;
ip2location_access_type shared_memory;
}


    

   Syntax

   Syntax: ip2location on|off
   Default: off
   Context: http, server, location
   Description: Enable or disable IP2LOCATION Nginx module.

   Syntax: ip2location_database path
   Default: none
   Context: http
   Description: The absolute path to IP2LOCATION BIN database.

   Syntax: ip2location_access_type file_io|shared_memory|cache_memory
   Default: shared_memory
   Context: http
   Description: Set the method used for lookup.

   Syntax: ip2location_proxy cidr|address
   Default: none
   Context: http
   Description: Set a list of proxies to translate x-forwarded-for headers for.

   Syntax: ip2location_proxy_recursive on|off
   Default: off
   Context: http
   Description: Enable recursive search in the x-forwarded-for headers.

   Variables

   The following variables will be made available in Nginx: ip2location_country_shortip2location_country_longip2location_regionip2location_cityip2location_ispip2location_latitudeip2location_longitudeip2location_domainip2location_zipcodeip2location_timezoneip2location_netspeedip2location_iddcodeip2location_areacodeip2location_weatherstationcodeip2location_weatherstationnameip2location_mccip2location_mncip2location_elevationip2location_usagetypeip2location_addresstypeip2location_category

   You may block the traffic from United States in Nginx as below:

   if ( $ip2location_country_short = 'US' ) {
       return 444;
   }