Fill & update location field with Location Services

[Alpha1]

Browsers and mobile phones have location information. This can be used to automatically fill location field, if the user permits this.
Please add this functionality to xenforo.

Due to privacy reasons not all webmasters may like this, so this should likely be a setting that can be turned on/off.

 

[Alpha1]

Could the title please be changed to: Fill & update location field with Location Services

I would like to suggest such function not only for registration but also for board use. If the user browses from a new location then update the location field automatically.
Do I need to create a separate suggestion thread for this?

 

[oVR]

I would like this too. It is important for other members to identify what time zones everyone is in without explicitly asking them.

 

[oVR]

This shouldnt be too difficult to implement.

Set a dynamic user field that checks the ip and just sets the city/state/country. Since IPs are easily tracked by the system and displayed for mods and admins for moderation purposes just make it so that it can also be used for informational purposes.

 

[Jeremy]

IP addresses are far from reliable for location.

 

[oVR]

IP addresses are far from reliable for location.

If it can track a log of where they log in or post from and use the most posted from ip to determine the location then it's pretty reliable.

Have a chron entry that recalculates the location based on most recent ip login location.

This solves the problem of proxies and occasionally login in from different locations.

Edit: basically track a median of the logged in from location(logged in most from) and have chron that resets it and starts tracking from the current location

 

[TPerry]

Edit: basically track a median of the logged in from location(logged in most from) and have chron that resets it and starts tracking from the current location

And it would STILL not be exact. For about 1.5 years our ISP was showing our location (by the IP) as Spring, Texas.
Small matter of 128.35 mile misplacement of our location.

 

[Adam Howard]

Locations by IP is not exactly accurate. Assuming when I don't use my VPN; much like @Tracy Perry my IPS has me about almost 300 miles away from where I really am. But as I originally said, I'm on a VPN and that places me even some place else.

 

[Wildcat Media]

The OP was likely talking about phone geolocation data, which is provided via GPS or by triangulation using cell towers. Same way Google Maps can nearly pinpoint my location even if GPS is off.

Trouble there is that we don't want a person's exact coordinates to show anywhere to the public in a forum, but instead, have the forum do a lookup to extract their city/state/country location and display that instead. (Members would have the option of specifying how fine they want that to resolve--they could choose city/state/country as levels of how close they want their location displayed.)

I have another Location suggestion but am posting it separately. It could work in tandem with this feature quite nicely.

 

[Alpha1]

Small matter of 128.35 mile misplacement of our location.

That 128 mile misplacement would be perfect if locations are not more exact than states and countries. Which would be perfect for my sites.

 

[Kintaro]

This is a great suggestion Alfa1!
In the meantime have you solved with an addon? I can't find anything on the RM. I think that can have a great potential.