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Workaround for developing with GeoPosty on local webserver (but still on public domain).

There are some who would like to develop locally to their webserver. If you are one of these people, please keep in mind that GeoPosty requires two things of your testing/development environment:

1) Your webserver must be on domain for which key is registered and visible to the Internet. Subdomains are fine.

2) Currently, testing must be done from a browser/computer non-local to webserver OR a workaround must be utilized. The GeoPosty API references the geolocation database by visitor IP address. So, if you are developing on your workstation’s localhost or on your company’s webserver, likely you will run into issues because the plugin will try to look up the visitor’s IP as the webserver sees it (some local IP like 192.168.xxx.xxx) which naturally will not show a valid match in the IP Geolocation database lookup. This is an issue for which we are looking to provide a native comprehensive workaround in coming versions of GeoPosty, but at the moment the only solution is trick the plugin by hardcoding a “dummy” IP address into the plugin code while you are testing.

The steps for that are:

1) Uninstall GeoPosty and delete the plugin files via the wordpress admin. This step will clear the data that is cached by the plugin for the purpose of economizing the number of lookups. This step will also clear widget data.

2) Download GeoPosty from the WordPress Plugin Repository via WordPress admin or manually. Do not yet activate GeoPosty.

3) Find your workstation’s public IP. You can lookup here: http://www.quova.com/what/ip-repository/.

4) Find your local IP:

Mac: http://guides.macrumors.com/IP_Address;
PC: http://guides.macrumors.com/IP_Address#Finding_the_IP_Address_on_Your_PC;
Linux/Unix: you can find it yourself, you’re a *nix person.

5) In the GeoPosty plugin files, comment out line 14 of curl.php. Replace with the following:

/*** this is the old line 14 of curl.php: $data = wp_remote_retrieve_body(wp_remote_get(‘http://api.geoposty.com/geo.php?domain=’. $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] .’&ip=’. getGeoIpAddress() .’&domainkey=’ . $geoposty_api_key)); ***/

//currently, my public IP is 174.79.450.75. You should insert your public IP.
$geoPublicIP = ’174.79.450.75′;

//currently, my private IP is 192.168.1.117. You should insert your local IP.
$geoLocalIP = ’192.168.1.117′;

if (getGeoIpAddress() == $geoLocalIP) {
$data = wp_remote_retrieve_body(wp_remote_get(‘http://api.geoposty.com/geo.php?domain=’. $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] .’&ip=’. $publicIP .’&domainkey=’ . $geoposty_api_key));
}
else {
$data = wp_remote_retrieve_body(wp_remote_get(‘http://api.geoposty.com/geo.php?domain=’. $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] .’&ip=’. getGeoIpAddress() .’&domainkey=’ . $geoposty_api_key));
}

Now activate GeoPosty. You have successfully tricked the plugin into looking up your current public IP. Keep in mind, if your local IP changes you will have to update your workaround.

It’s not super-pretty, but before we are able to put in the super-pretty user-friendly workaround for those wanting to develop locally, this is what we have.