Geolocation shows the country and city next to the IP address of an event. This is a feature of Pastmark Pro. It is off by default.
Go to User Activity → Settings → Geolocation.
Turn it on #
- Click Turn on geolocation.
- Pastmark Pro downloads a free database from db-ip.com. It is about 60 MB to download and about 130 MB on your disk. This takes a short time.
- When it is ready, you see the date and the size of the database. Reload the Activity Logs page to see the locations.
The database is the DB-IP City Lite database. Pastmark Pro saves it in wp-content/uploads/pastmark-pro/geo/. The folder is protected from direct access. Once a month, a scheduled task gets a new version.
Pastmark Pro checks every download before it replaces the old file. If a download fails, the old database stays and you see an error.
Privacy #
- All lookups happen on your own site. No visitor IP address is sent to any service.
- The only request to the outside is the download of the database from db-ip.com.
Where you see locations #
| Place | What you see |
|---|---|
| Table view | The Location column: a flag and the country code, for example US. |
| Timeline view | A flag, the city and the code, for example London, GB. |
| Details of an event | A Location box with the city and the country, for example Amsterdam, The Netherlands. |
- An IP address from a private network, for example your own computer, shows Local network.
- When you use Anonymize IP Addresses, Pastmark can show only the country.
Locations are not saved in the log #
Pastmark Pro looks up the place when you view the log. It does not save the place in the event. So:
- Old events show locations too.
- When you turn geolocation off, the locations disappear everywhere.
- Pastmark Pro keeps the answer for each IP address for 7 days to be fast.
Columns: the Location column is also in the Columns menu of the table. Read View your activity log.
Turn it off #
Click Turn off and delete the database. Pastmark Pro deletes the database file and the saved answers. When you uninstall Pastmark Pro, it also removes the setting, the scheduled task and the folder.
If the download fails #
Click Try again. The error tells you the reason. This is a common one:
On some hosts, the web server cannot write to wp-content/uploads. Ask your host to fix the permissions of that folder. Then click Try again.
How exact is it #
The country is reliable. The city is only a good guess. The free database is not as exact as a paid one.
The database is from DB-IP.com under the license CC BY 4.0. The credit line is at the bottom of the Geolocation tab: IP geolocation data by DB-IP.com (CC BY 4.0).