Redirect Help!

tacofries

Hey,

I have 2 domains. One is for Ireland and the other is for the UK. I want Northern Irish visitors to be redirected to the Irish website but the redirect app that I use on Shopify (Cozy Redirect) treats NI as part of the UK.

Does anyone know how difficult it would be to get some code made to fix the above?

Thanks in advance

Talisman

Have you tried contacting the developer?

tacofries

I contacted the developer of the shopify app that I use but they are saying there is nothing that they can do. Their response is below:


We are using two service providers for the country database and unfortunately, Northern Ireland is not in either of them as a Country since it is a State/Province within the United Kingdom itself.

Therefore, we won't be able to separate Northern Ireland to be detected individually since there'd be no IP data to compare it to.

Talisman

That's a bull**** response. Ask them what providers they are using.

I know from experience that MaxMind provides the information for subdivisions using ISO 3166-2 codes. So within the USA, you get the state and for the UK you get the country for England, Scotland and Wales and province for Northern Ireland. MaxMind is the largest GeoIP database service provider so I would be really surprised if they are not using their service.

tacofries

Thanks a lot for that Talisman. It's great to be able to push the issue with some proper insight to back it up. I emailed them your response so will post back with how it goes

Talisman

If you need to cite chapter and verse you can refer them to the Maxmind website:

https://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoip2/whats-new-in-geoip2/

ISO 3166-2, FIPS 10-4, and Country Subdivisions

We now provide the ISO 3166-2 codes for country subdivisions when they are available. The GeoIP2 databases and services do not include FIPS 10-4 region codes. The GeoIP Legacy databases included ISO codes for US and Canada and FIPS codes for all other countries.

We also provide multiple levels of country subdivision data. The subdivisions these provide correspond to the subdivisions which have been given ISO 3166-2 codes. For example, in the United States, we only provide a single level of subdivision data, corresponding to US states. But for the United Kingdom, we may provide two levels. The first level is the country (England, Scotland, Wales) or province (Northern Ireland). The second level may be a county, a London borough, a unitary authority, council area, etc.

tacofries

I got this reply and they said they'd help me set it up so I think all will workout !? Do you think the below sounds good?

I do have a solution to the problem:

Solution:

We can set up an independent server with MaxMind City DB for you and write a JS which will auto-redirect customers as per your requirement. I am assuming you have three total rules all auto-redirect (no popup). Advantage would be that JS will have country code / IS 31660-2 inside it and hence redirect will be still faster than most solutions available.

Talisman

From that response I suspect the developers are a bunch of enterprising individuals who have wrapped the cheapest MaxMind product which only provides the country data. It costs them $24 a month and providing a service to third parties is a violation of the license.

Now they are offering you the MaxMind City DB product which will cost them $100 per month, but they will still be in violation of the license.

If you are happy with the service they provide then saying yes to their proposed solution is a no brainer. The license violation isn't your problem but it is a risk you need to be aware of. The service could potentially disappear at any time if MaxMind become aware of how their product is being used.

MaxMind provide a less accurate product GeoLite2 which is licensed for providing services to third parties and costs about $450 a year.