Determing visitor location and checking downloads

[Gernwax]

I didn’t really want to create two separate topics, so here we go.

Basically I just want to ask if anyone has had any experience in either:

1) Ways of quickly finding out which country your visitors are from on the fly (as in as they view the page)

2) I want to offer a small download service to members, but I don’t want the same people to continually downloading the same files (i.e. on purpose to cause me high bandwidth cost) so I am looking at some way to check if someone has successfully downloaded a file already.

If anyone has used any tools or anything to deal with the above, can you please give me some advice or guidance on how to do or what to look for/into?

[le_gber]

1) Ways of quickly finding out which country your visitors are from on the fly (as in as they view the page)

it depends, do you have a real time stat package?

What would you want to use this for - if it's support or sale and you are thinking of using a instant messaging software, some may provide this information.

2) I want to offer a small download service to members, but I don�t want the same people to continually downloading the same files (i.e. on purpose to cause me high bandwidth cost) so I am looking at some way to check if someone has successfully downloaded a file already.

Would these be free download? If so try using a login for them to download the file and you should be able to count how many times a file has been downloaded. You could also use a cron job to automatically change the name of the file every day (by adding 10 random caracters after it's name) and have this linked to the login for download section that way you can be certain that they can't just bookmark the file directly.

Hope this helps

[adb64]

To find out from which country your visitors come you can use the free ip-to-country database which can be downloaded from: [ip-to-country.webhosting.info...]

Regards,

Arjan

[Gernwax]

adb64: Thanks that site looks great, i will most probably be using that.

le_gber: It is not necessarily a free download no, i could easily check everytime they click to start the download, but then i can't guarantee they have completed the download

[le_gber]

Gernwax,

How about giving them a set period to download it and it's then up to them to do so and if they don't they need to contact you.

[Gernwax]

Yeah I had thought about that, but was wondering if there was an alternative as you have to take into account the chances that someone is still on dial-up or a really slow connection and that file sizes could vary, making it a little tricky to quantify a time.

That might be the best option though.