simple setup for allowing visitors to choose their country

Nicole wrote:
> I need to be able to change the currency and some form fields displayed on
> my website depending on where the visitor is based. I don't need a fully
> functional cart, just a kinda either display '$10' or '£7' sort of thing!

Looks wrong. Every currencies have different weightage. Say, for
example 1Euro~55INR while 1USD~45INR.

> I was planning on having a map on my opening screen with hotspots over the
> countries.
<snip>

If supporting many countries, better not use the map at all. For
example, India has different versioned map: Indian version of India,
Pakistan version of India, CIA version of India, etc. So, there are
more chances that it will hurt anyone of them when you prefer one map.
(FYI, M$ had to touch their map of India in Win 95, IIRC).

> This seems rather long winded! Is it the right way to do it?

Better, look at other CMS source codes and implementation, esp one
with all these supports.

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www.1-script.com <info_at_1-script_dot_com@foo.com> wrote:
> I think the right way to do that would be using the GeoIP PHP API:
>
> http://www.maxmind.com/app/php
>
> This way you don't have to ask, just give them the custom layout based on
> their IP Address. Not without its limitations, but think about
> human-induced error factor: it is highly unlikely that you will get an
> honest answer from a visitor coming from Russia, India, China or any other
> place that online retailers don't like much. They know for the fact that
> they will be treated badly and maybe even denied access to the site, so
> why bother answering this question honestly? It's so easy to just pick
> U.S.A. from the list you've provided.

One thing that really annoys me about Google is that when I use it from
another country, it redirects me to the "local" version and presents itself
in a language that more often than not, I can't understand. Then I have to
go in and set the language preferences for google.com.th or whatever - it
neither picks up on the setting I have for google.com, nor presents a
language option right on the main page.

Making bold yet inflexible guesses about people's preferences is quite often
a bad idea. It would be fine to present a recommended country selection, but
to insist on one based on IP address seems like a poor option.

Not to mention, of course, the unreliability of the practice in the first
place. If you look at the headers of my post you might think I'm in
Washington, DC, but I'm actually in Kuala Lumpur, some 10000 miles away.
There are proxy servers, corporate networks and VPNs, and all sorts of other
confounding factors.

miguel
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