Following from This Thread, I decided to make my own mod which works as a normal block which can be called on any IMportal / cms page.



Demo can be seen working Here
(Note: I've customised the mod on my site to display to a fixed width to suit my theme - a default mod install will resize depending on browser window size).


Screenshot:


To simplify everything, I've bundled in all 3rd party files except GeoLiteCity.dat. All of the third-party files here have been modified to suit the phpbb environment and to make them secure. It is better to upload this zip file direct to your icy phoenix root folder and decompress there (directory structure should be maintained, so all the files should be placed where they belong).

You must get your own google map API key. If you don't have one, get one Here

Installation: I have created an install script which installs the required table and maintains the table prefix, so that it matches your phpbb / icyphoenix table structure. You must be logged in as admin to run the script.


*EDIT* Could not upload full installation with GeoLiteCity.dat (even though compressed) - seems to be a problem uploading 15MB files on this board (Error no mode specified on posting.php - although mode was new at start of upload). You must obtain GeoLiteCity.dat from the MaxMind Website

That is, how to actually add a maker image, rather than use the default image provided by google.

Example. Suppose we have two images located in our / images directory that we want to use as markers (two, one for main marker image, and another for a shadow image). Suppose the main marker image is called "mm_20_red.png" and the shadow is called "mm_20_shadow.png", and we have uploaded these to our phpbb_root_path/images folder.

The file we need to edit is: /templates/mg_themes/blocks/ip_phoogle_map_block.tpl

Now the google map presents the images via javascript, and we need to understand a little about how this works in order to add the images - you can't just put in a new image in the parameters and expect it to display correctly - you need to adjust the parameters to suit, so lets take a quick look at how marker images are defined.

First part, object creation - GIcon.

What is GIcon?, its the name used by the google maps api for the icon / marker "class". We'll not delve too far into how classes work, but you use it to construct a new object, the one you actually want to use, using the command "new GIcon", and then assign the required parameters for this new "object".

We are going to generate a new GIcon object called "new_icon" in our web page and refer to this object when a marker is made.

So without further ado, open ip_phoogle_map_block.tpl.

After

We insert the following:


Note the variables new_icon.size, new_icon.iconAnchor, and new_icon.infoWindowAnchor. These are the values that are important to get right so I'll explain these in more detail - plenty of people run into problems when they try adding images to google maps, and the majority of the time its because they get these values wrong (consequently the markers appear nowhere near the geographical location, usually a totally different country entirely!). So... what are these objects and so one that we use to assign the values?

GSize: Used to declare the dimensions, and the parameters are: GSize(Width, Height), here for the main image, Width=12 Height =20

GPoint: Used to declare the position, and the parameters are: GPoint(X, Y). Under geographical point generation, the X and Y are actually latitude and Longitude co-ordinates, but for us here, for a GIcon object, X and Y are relative displacements in pixels - relative to the geographical point assigned else where.

new_icon.size (and new_icon.shadowSize): The size in pixels of your marker (and shadow) image - so find out what your image dimensions are.

new_icon.iconAnchor: This gives the anchor point displacement of the image with respect to the actual geographical reference point, with respect to the top left corner of the image. It is important therefore to know what your image size is, so you know how much to display by. In this example, (and indeed for most markers) we want the geographical point to be be centered half-way along the x-axis of the image, so we displace by X=Width/2 = 6. We might want to be able to see the point, and thus move the anchor point up by Y=Height, the height of the image. Note if we had an image such as a cross (or X), we'd want the centre of the image to coincide with the geographical location. Thus we displace in the Y direction by Height/2.

new_icon.infoWindowAnchor: This gives the displacement for the info bubble, which provides the visitor information. We can keep this the same as the new_icon.iconAnchor displacements, or perhaps make it centered on the geographical point, as done here. Again the actual icon image size is used as a reference, even though the info bubble has it's own image and size.


Second Part: Include the new icon object at the point of marker generation. This is simply done by adding the object "new_icon" in the GMarker line.

Look for:


Change the GMarker line to:



And thats all there is to it.

As for the marker images - it turns out google has a number of coloured pointers, similar but smaller than the default one. These can be obtained from:

http://labs.google.com/ridefinder/images/mm_20_orange.png
http://labs.google.com/ridefinder/images/mm_20_yellow.png
http://labs.google.com/ridefinder/images/mm_20_black.png
http://labs.google.com/ridefinder/images/mm_20_red.png
http://labs.google.com/ridefinder/images/mm_20_blue.png
http://labs.google.com/ridefinder/images/mm_20_brown.png
http://labs.google.com/ridefinder/images/mm_20_green.png
And the shadow:
http://labs.google.com/ridefinder/images/mm_20_shadow.png

Of course, you could try linking to these directly, but probably best to upload to your images directory to reduce dependence on their servers if they get busy.





As a side note, it is also possible to generate icons based on country, although this would take time to do. I'll outline the procedure though.

Suppose we have all our flags labeled in some logical fashion, like uk.png, us.png, de.png for the UK, US and Germany respectively, and that these are located in some folder, like /images/flags. What we do is repeat the creation of a GIcon, as with the new_icon object above, but for each country. For example where we put the new_icon code above, we instead put:



The createMarker() function parses the country variable, so we can build an icon object array which calls the icon object depending on country. We place these lines directly after the icon creation lines, that is before the createMarker() function itself.


Then in our createMarker() function, where we modified the GMarker by adding new_icon, instead we call the country icons array, and parse the country variable:


Of course there are a lot of countries in the world, and implementing this to it's entirety would mean doing a check to see what are all the country codes used by the geodata scripts (though they should be the standard internationally recognized country codes).

I think though, that you all get a general idea of what can be done with icon images.... and I have barely touched the surface...

Of course... you know you've gone too far when this happens...

wow!!!

Awesome!!!

I'm goint to play with this!!

Thank you!!

____________
Icy Phoenix Latest 2.0 (working pending)
Style: Aphrodite and MG_Themes
Site: Spanish Stephen King fan forum
Mods: Medal System Mod. BBAntispam 1.2. Several own BBcodes.

You know, my head exploded when I found phpbb, then phpBBXS and finally Icy Phoenix... I love it, my users love it and it helps our club run well and smooth. My extreme thanks to all who have made it what it is...

As for this gem of a mod, moreteavicar, thank you for all of your work... this is an excellent mod and a great addition to the IKE icy phoenix site.

I put the mod up yesterday and this morning, I was shocked to see where our hits were coming from. We are just a lowly little kite club out of Illinois that was started at the end of 2006. We have one season under out belt with the next about to start. We have made a lot of contact with other kiters and have worked hard to get our name out there... This mod shows us that we are doing something right.

That's not to say that EVERY hit has been from someone exactly looking for us, of course it isn't, but the majority of them seem to be and we are THRILLED at the results of our efforts.... Without this mod, we really wouldn't have known and wouldn't have been able to visualize it to this extent...

 

So again, thanks to everyone for the ideas and the work to implement it. This is all just fantastic!

C

babbman wrote: [View Post]

You know, my head exploded when I found phpbb, then phpBBXS and finally Icy Phoenix... I love it, my users love it and it helps our club run well and smooth. My extreme thanks to all who have made it what it is...

As for this gem of a mod, moreteavicar, thank you for all of your work... this is an excellent mod and a great addition to the IKE icy phoenix site.

I put the mod up yesterday and this morning, I was shocked to see where our hits were coming from. We are just a lowly little kite club out of Illinois that was started at the end of 2006. We have one season under out belt with the next about to start. We have made a lot of contact with other kiters and have worked hard to get our name out there... This mod shows us that we are doing something right.

That's not to say that EVERY hit has been from someone exactly looking for us, of course it isn't, but the majority of them seem to be and we are THRILLED at the results of our efforts.... Without this mod, we really wouldn't have known and wouldn't have been able to visualize it to this extent...

Niente, no problem - we do these things because we like them too
Great, you modded your icons too. I had to google search to find your site and get my IP on there

Xusqui wrote: [View Post]

wow!!!

Awesome!!!

I'm goint to play with this!!

Thank you!!

I hope this mod isn't the reason we can't see your forum at http://wiki.ka-tet-corp.com!  

BTW I know its early days, but there appears to be a side-benefit to this mod. Attempted hacks on my site has completely stopped since I installed this 3 days ago (I was getting on average 3 a day - the ctracker record only shows 42 at the moment, because I had to re-install the site a couple of weeks a go). The only explanation I can think of is that this mod makes IP logging look very visible, and thus deters would be script kiddies, who otherwise worked on the assumption that most people running these forums didn't know how to log IP addresses / view server raw logs. I could be wrong, and what I am experiencing could be a temporary lapse in hack attempts, but this opens up an interesting security usage...

I am thinking of making an add-on to allow this mod to read the cracker-tracker worm and exploit logs and display the IP address (and attempted attack) on the google map - in other words, a wall of shame - and with a "nasty" icon image to differentiate from good users. Perhaps I'll make cracker tracker write to a simpler "hacker" table log in SQL besides the text file, as the latter has a lot of extra info to crawl through just to obtain the IP address, user agent and exploit attempt, it would probably be slower than just pulling data from SQL.... This also reminds me of another point, that cracker tracker is slightly useless at blocking repeat offenders - so perhaps simultaneously I will create an additional mod to make cracker tracker write a deny IP statement in the .htaccess file. Obviously we don't want to block on the basis of accidental "exploits" by members that cracker tracker often records, so there would be something to check the logins table IP-log to see if the offending IP address belongs to a user. Maybe have a 3 strikes and you're out policy. Anyway, main thing would be to show up the bad people on a google map. I'll have a think about this in the next few days... (will be away from my main computer for rest of this week though!).

Would be nice to know if other people think this is a good idea, or whether I am being over-optimistic, and that a phoogle map wall of shame might actually encourage hackers to get themselves on there (and banned!).

moreteavicar wrote: [View Post]

Xusqui wrote: [View Post]

wow!!!

Awesome!!!

I'm goint to play with this!!

Thank you!!

I hope this mod isn't the reason we can't see your forum at http://wiki.ka-tet-corp.com!  

He, he!!! No, I don't think so... Even the wiki place has nothing to do with the main site, only shares the users, but are completely different... The problem is I should give more memory to it...

BTW, what it would be really amazing is to ad a user_id to the geoip table so, when the user is registered, the map could show the avatar of the user!!!

     

Its a useful mod, in my web only admins may take a look at it, so we can guide the web in the right direction!

Thank you very much!

____________
Icy Phoenix Latest 2.0 (working pending)
Style: Aphrodite and MG_Themes
Site: Spanish Stephen King fan forum
Mods: Medal System Mod. BBAntispam 1.2. Several own BBcodes.

Xusqui wrote: [View Post]

BTW, what it would be really amazing is to ad a user_id to the geoip table so, when the user is registered, the map could show the avatar of the user!!!

Thats a good idea... if slightly tricky... the only reliable way I see of establishing that an IP blongs to a registered user is through checking the logins table, since the users table doesn't always record the IP of the registered user (from what I experience, maybe works better for other users) - also users table only records registered and last used IP for a user, but users may regularly use more than one machine/location to use the site, so logins table is the way to go. The problem is that logins table can be very big, and could slow site loading down - the only way I can envisage using this is to check the logins table if the visitor IP isn't already in the phoogle table, and if not, then check the logins table to match the IP with a user ID... but this means all new site visitors will experience the same logins check routine.... maybe it won't slow down too much, so still worth trying...

The avatar bit again would be slightly tricky, especially if users have different sized avatars... there'd need to be some gd image commands to get the size of the avatar, and then use the dimension data to determine the GSize and GPoint variables... a bit of work, though not too difficult.

I won't be able to play with this idea myself for the next few days, so if you or anybody else want to have a tinker...

 

Off Topic

:

A great job... why?
Because it is a interesting MOD, it is well presented and very well explained...

Thanks moreteavicar

____________
ThE KuKa - www.phpBB-Es.COM - Custom Installations phpBB

moreteavicar wrote: [View Post]

Thats a good idea... if slightly tricky... the only reliable way I see of establishing that an IP blongs to a registered user is through checking the logins table, since the users table doesn't always record the IP of the registered user (from what I experience, maybe works better for other users) - also users table only records registered and last used IP for a user, but users may regularly use more than one machine/location to use the site, so logins table is the way to go. The problem is that logins table can be very big, and could slow site loading down - the only way I can envisage using this is to check the logins table if the visitor IP isn't already in the phoogle table, and if not, then check the logins table to match the IP with a user ID... but this means all new site visitors will experience the same logins check routine.... maybe it won't slow down too much, so still worth trying...

The avatar bit again would be slightly tricky, especially if users have different sized avatars... there'd need to be some gd image commands to get the size of the avatar, and then use the dimension data to determine the GSize and GPoint variables... a bit of work, though not too difficult.

I won't be able to play with this idea myself for the next few days, so if you or anybody else want to have a tinker...

Thanks for thinking about it!!!

I think its more simple than that...

In the add_geoip() function you may ask...

Is user logged in? If yes --> Add $userdata['user_id'] to a new field in the geo_ip database, if not, add -1 to that field

When reading the geo_ip table just read the $userdata['username'] where $userdata['user_id'] = $geoip['user'] or something like that...

If the avatar is not shown, I wouldn't mind...

And a question...

How many icons are shown in the map? Because this morning, in my live forum, I could see my own icon, but not this afternoon, it's gone

Thanks, man!!!

____________
Icy Phoenix Latest 2.0 (working pending)
Style: Aphrodite and MG_Themes
Site: Spanish Stephen King fan forum
Mods: Medal System Mod. BBAntispam 1.2. Several own BBcodes.

moreteavicar wrote: [View Post]

BTW I know its early days, but there appears to be a side-benefit to this mod. Attempted hacks on my site has completely stopped since I installed this 3 days ago...

Would be nice to know if other people think this is a good idea, or whether I am being over-optimistic, and that a phoogle map wall of shame might actually encourage hackers to get themselves on there (and banned!).

Now you know why I didn't post my site...LOL... I got wacked pretty good by turkhackgrup a few weeks ago... it was one of the reasons I wanted something to log IP's... displaying them for all to see is a great benefit...

Here's a quick question... I was trying to modify the block tpl a bit by adding a dragzoom control (http://googlemapsapi.blogspot.com/2007/06/dragzoomcontrol-v10-easier-zooming_06.html)... but it was looking for version 2 of the google map api...  is there a reason for sticking with version 1? never mind...

A different question... speaking of hacking, can we log the time and date that the ip address was logged into the database?

Xusqui wrote: [View Post]

Thanks for thinking about it!!!

I think its more simple than that...

In the add_geoip() function you may ask...

Is user logged in? If yes --> Add $userdata['user_id'] to a new field in the geo_ip database, if not, add -1 to that field

When reading the geo_ip table just read the $userdata['username'] where $userdata['user_id'] = $geoip['user'] or something like that...

If the avatar is not shown, I wouldn't mind...

Bonjour
Ah yes, i was thinking of this also (a login switch) - in fact... actually implementing the code in login.php rather than in add_geoip(), just to reduce the amount of code executed for visitors... but what I had in mind was also to populate a user IP list so that you could easily see a user visited the site without them logging in - something perhaps useful for an admin? Otherwise it could be done simply as you describe. Another point will be the need to resize avatars as the would probably be too big on the map. The problem is the javascript GSize doesn't resize Gicon objects llike the size parameter in html <img> tags, but resize could be done either with a php gd function, or with a javascript image resize routine.... something to think about

Xusqui wrote: [View Post]

And a question...

How many icons are shown in the map? Because this morning, in my live forum, I could see my own icon, but not this afternoon, it's gone

Thanks, man!!!

Ah yes, by default it displays the last 100 visitors, I was thinking of adding a portal config option so this can be changed within CMS. However you can easily change this in blocks/blocks_imp_ip_phoogle_map.php. Just look for the line and change to suit. You could also change to to display the first visitors rather than latest...

babbman wrote: [View Post]

Now you know why I didn't post my site...LOL... I got wacked pretty good by turkhackgrup a few weeks ago... it was one of the reasons I wanted something to log IP's... displaying them for all to see is a great benefit...

A different question... speaking of hacking, can we log the time and date that the ip address was logged into the database?

Oooh no.... any idea what exploit they used? (Should be something in the cracker tracker log file, unless they managed to delete it.... otherwise check the server raw access logs). This is why I do not like cracker tracker very much... it is only really a bloated hack logger, it doesn't do anything pro-active like IP blocking to stop hacks. Ok, it displays a message when it detects a hack, but that doesn't stop a persistent hacker from trying different methods. Best thing is to block their IP in htaccess when a hacker is detected, but perhaps with a 2/3 strikes policy in case of an accidental trigger.

Anyway, as for IP phoogle Map IP logging, time and date could be added, it wouldn't be too hard... although because it is designed to log a visitors IP only once, it might not be so useful to know the first time they visited a site, but not later times. Unless the mod was changed into a full on IP logger and recorded the IP every time somebody visited... The way I see it, there should already be a lot of logging done by your server, so if you really wanted to check up on a visitor, you need only look at the raw access logs, and you see exactly what they did (URL request, maybe a remote file inclusion), where from (IP) and how (browser type / bot). On the other hand, if this phoogle map was used to display bad hackers IP addresses from cracker tracker logs, I'd probably add date/time of their attempted hack, but this is recorded by cracker tracker... Actually for the mod it would be better to log the hacker info in the SQL phoogle table, so... date and time would be placed there anyway... but still perhaps best not to bother for site visitors? Perhaps you can tell me more what it is you have in mind...

ThE KuKa wrote: [View Post]

 

Off Topic

:

A great job... why?
Because it is a interesting MOD, it is well presented and very well explained...

Thanks moreteavicar

Thanks KuKa, although ieio also deserves full credit for raising this issue and presenting the necessary info such as the MaxMind geo dataset... without his great post I wouldn't have had the inspiration to take it further...

LOL somebody doesn't like this mod though, they have given it a 1 star to bring ave down to 5.5!