This post is a continuation of the phpBay Pro Extended Manual. You can use Table of Contents below if you want to start from the beginning or jump to a different section.

Table Of Contents

• Introduction
• Installation/Activation
• Configuration
• Testing
• Per-Post/Per-Page Settings
• Geo-Targeting
• Making The Images Clickable
• Replacing WordPress Search With eBay Search
• Inserting phpBay Code Into Theme Files
• Buy phpBay Pro (20% off coupon: DA9CD69F42)
• From Picking A Market To Building/Managing Your phpBay (Or BANS) Site

There is a free plugin available that will automatically display auctions for the country of your visitor when they arrive on your site. Note: This is different than the WordPress Geo-Targeting Script that can be used for displaying any type of content to visitors from other countries. This one is specific to phpBay.

The plugin was created by Alan (a phpBay Pro user) and is available free (donation-ware) from his blog after opting-in to his newsletter. Let's get the plugin now...

1. Visit http://www.psp-tubes.net/wordpress/phpbay-plugin
2. Scroll to the very bottom because it is mostly an out-dated post.
3. Enter your name and email and click 'Send me the plugin'. You may be brought to a page that says 'Whoops! That Page Isn't Here'. Don't worry, there is just something funky going on with his subscription pages. Perhaps he should switch to Aweber ;) At any rate, you should quickly get an email with the Subject: 'ACTION REQUIRED: Confirm your subscription.'. Click the link in the email to confirm your subscription. You will again probably be brought to a page that says 'Whoops! That Page Isn't Here'. Again, don't worry. You should be receiving another email shortly with the link for the plugin.
4. Open the email with the Subject: 'phpBay plugin download details'.
5. Click the 2nd link in the email to download the plugin.

Now that we have the plugin, let's get it installed...

1. Unzip the file
2. Upload 'geo.php', 'combo.php', 'country.php' and 'geoip.inc' to '/wp-content/plugins/phpBay/includes/' on your server. Note: You will be overwriting 2 files, 'geo.php' and 'combo.php', so you may want to backup the ones on the server first. Renaming them on the sever before uploading the new ones will work.
3. Download the free database file from maxmind.com. Click here. Under the 'Binary Format' section, click the link 'Download the latest GeoLite Country Binary Format' to save the database to your computer. It will be compressed in .gz format. The free tool WinRAR can decompress the file, much like unzipping a file.
4. You will be left with a file called 'GeoIP.dat'. It needs to be uploaded to '/wp-content/plugins/phpBay/includes/' in Binary mode. If using FileZilla to upload, go to Transfer > Transfer type > Binary. You can check maxmind.com for a new version each month. I, myself, just update it every 6 months. When updating, just overwrite the existing file on the server.

That should do it! To be certain it works, switch the default country in the phpBay settings to one other than your own temporarily. Make sure the sorting options or the eBay logo is displayed (discussed earlier) because having one or both of those turned on will also turn on the country dropdown box. Now visit the test page that you created earlier. You should be now viewing auctions in your own country rather than the default country. If you still see the default country it might be because the page is cached. If using Firefox you can usually press Ctrl+F5 to fix that.

Notice something about the auctions? The darn images aren't clickable. We'll get to that next.

Related posts:

1. phpBay Pro: The Extended Manual – Replacing WordPress Search
2. phpBay Pro: The Extended Manual – Installation and Activation
3. phpBay Pro: The Extended Manual – Inserting phpBay Code Into Theme Files