Here at Gecko Gully we are big fans of the WordPress plugin IQ Block Country.  We wrote about it last year.

But recent upgrades have resulted in an IQ Block Country error message appearing within WordPress admin that might be alarming to some users – “The MaxMind GeoIP database does not exist”.  Especially since it appears on every admin page:

The author of the plugin has written about the issue here: http://www.redeo.nl/2015/02/why-iq-block-country-is-no-longer-on-the-wordpress-site/

All Gecko Gully sites that are covered by a Silver or Gold After-Sales Service plan are being fixed today.  But if you are not covered by such a plan, or if you need to do this yourself, here is a guide to what to do, if you can’t follow the instructions in the IQ Block Country error message .  Note that there is a certain amount of technical knowledge required to do this – if you don’t have this level of technical knowledge, please show this post to whoever looks after your web site.  Specifically, you need to know how to unzip a file and upload it to your hosting using either ftp or cpanel.

First, you can pretty much ignore the first line, that talks about an API key.  I looked at that , and the API key costs 25 Euros right now, and I think that is per site.  While that might be a good thing to have, it basically allows the list of IP addresses to be updated for you automatically rather than manually.  I did not follow this route, as I want to do it manually (instructions follow), but if you prefer to do it manually I believe you pay your 25 Euros, then you will get an API key.  In your admin, go to Settings -> IQ Block Country and on the Home tab you will find a box where you can put that API key then press Save Changes.

To do a manual update, you click on the link in the second paragraph, http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCountry/GeoIP.dat.gz and save the resulting file on your computer.  Then do the same for the other link, http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoIPv6.dat.gz

Next, use whatever software you have on your computer for unzipping, and unzip the two files.  Depending on your settings, you will either have two files called GeoIP.dat and GeoIPv6.dat, or two folders with those names, with the files inside them.

The next thing is to use either ftp software  (e.g. Filezilla) or the File Manager in your site’s cPanel, to upload the two .dat files to your hosting.  NOT the folders, the files.  They both need to go into /wp-content/uploads.

Once that is done, go back to your WordPress admin and refresh the screen and the IQ Block Country error message should have gone away