WP Engine GeoIP 1.1: Localizing Content Made Simple

WP Engine GeoIP, which we launched earlier this year, empowers brands, marketers, engineers, legal departments, and site owners to serve site visitors localized content. GeoIP unlocks the ability to show visitors pricing in their national currency, sites in their language, and content that is most relevant based on their geography.

Over time, we have seen and heard about the benefits WP Engine GeoIP provides for our customers. However, there was one lingering challenge we needed to resolve. While integration of the GeoIP plugin on your site was relatively painless, it still required you to have some knowledge of API calls and development practices. Well, we have some exciting news for you: based on your feedback, we’ve made two changes that make WP Engine GeoIP even easier to use!

First, we have added more built in shortcode functionality to assist with displaying specific content to visitors in different locations. All you will need to do is add the shortcode tags for the content that needs to be displayed and GeoIP will handle the rest. Simple as that!

Here is an example of how to use the new shortcodes:

This will display “Content just for US visitors” strictly for visitors viewing from the United States.

Content just for US visitors

This will display “Content just for everyone in Texas and California” strictly for visitors from Texas and California.

This will display “Content for everyone not in San Francisco” strictly for visitors not from San Francisco. Viewers in San Francisco will not see this message.

Content for everyone not in San Francisco

In addition to the new shortcodes listed above, we’ve added new testing functionality that makes it even easier to test how your localized content will appear to visitors from various geographic locations. Using “spoofing parameters,” you can add any of the parameters below to your URL to test visiting the page from the specified location:

?geoip&region=TX – Visiting from the state of Texas
?geoip&country=US – Visiting from the United States
?geoip&city=Austin – Visiting from Austin, Texas
?geoip&zip=78701 – Visiting from the U.S. zip code 78701

Please note: full page redirects and TLD redirects still need to be implemented with the necessary API calls. You can see the full changelog here.

All these new features are included in version 1.1 of WP Engine GeoIP, which is now available in the WordPress Plugin repo. If you need to update your GeoIP plugin to the latest version, there are two ways:

1. Update the plugin through the WP Admin Dashboard with the default plugin updater.
2. Download the plugin files from this page: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpengine-geoip/.

We are always seeking to improve our customer experience and offer additional features and uses for GeoIP. Keep an eye out for additional functionality in the future.

For more information on WP Engine GeoIP, download our ebook.

Taylor McCaslin works as a Product Manager at WP Engine. WordPress has been Taylor’s platform of choice for over 5 years, he even paid his way through college by freelancing as a WordPress developer! When not creating products that captivate and delight, you’ll find Taylor geeking out with the latest tech gadget or experiencing the rich Austin art scene.

Follow Taylor on Twitter @Taylor4484.