by Pascal 3.9 (164 reviews)

iQ Block Country

Name: iQ Block Country
Rating: 3.9 (164 reviews)
Author: Pascal

Allow or disallow visitors from certain countries accessing (parts of) your website

iQ Block Country ranks #1,141 among WordPress.org plugins with 20,000+ active installations, is #51 of 2,818 in the Discussion & Community category, a 3.9/5 rating from 164 reviews, and was last updated Jun 17, 2026. Data from WordPress.org, refreshed twice daily — see methodology.

Compatible with WP 7

v1.2.28 Current Version v1.2.28

Updated 1 month ago Last Update on 17 Jun, 2026

Refreshed 17 hours ago Last Refreshed on

#51 of 2,818 in Discussion & Community Top 5% by installs Downloads -31.8% this week

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Rank

#1,141

— No change

Active Installs

20K+

— No change

KW Avg Position

18.2

— No change

Downloads

1.2M

+2 today

Support Resolved

— No change

Rating

78%

Review 3.9 out of 5

3.9 (164 reviews)

Next Milestone 30K

Total Progress 88.6%

20K+ 30K+

Ranks to Climb

Growth Needed

8,000,000

Active Installs

Pro

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Rank Changes

Current #1,141

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Active Installs Growth

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Active Installs 0,000,000+

Growth +0.0%

Peak 0,000,000

Downloads Growth

Downloads

Growth

Peak

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Reviews & Ratings

3.9

164 reviews

Overall 78%

110 (67%)

6 (4%)

7 (4%)

35 (21%)

Tracked Keywords

Showing 5 of 5

Keyword	Position	Change	Type	Updated
ban countries	1	—	Tag	1 day ago
Geoblocking	2	—	Tag	1 day ago
Block countries	3	—	Tag	1 day ago
block spam	16	—	Tag	1 day ago
block	69	—	Tag	1 day ago

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Security History

Source: WPVulnerability

8 known vulnerabilities on record · 0 in the last 24 months · checked 12 hours ago

Aug 24, 2023

iQ Block Country [iq-block-country] < 1.1.20

Fixed in v1.1.20
Sep 26, 2022

iQ Block Country [iq-block-country] < 1.2.19

CVE-2022-41155 · Fixed in v1.2.19
May 17, 2022

iQ Block Country [iq-block-country] < 1.2.17

CVE-2022-1762 · Fixed in v1.2.17
Mar 16, 2022

iQ Block Country [iq-block-country] < 1.2.13

CVE-2022-0246 · Fixed in v1.2.13
Jul 18, 2021

iQ Block Country [iq-block-country] < 1.2.12

CVE-2021-36873 · Fixed in v1.2.12
Aug 24, 2015

iQ Block Country [iq-block-country] < 1.1.20

Fixed in v1.1.20
Aug 24, 2015

iQ Block Country [iq-block-country] < 1.1.20

Fixed in v1.1.20
iQ Block Country [iq-block-country] < 1.1.20

Fixed in v1.1.20

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Plugin Details

Version: 1.2.28
Last Updated: Jun 17, 2026
Requires WP: 3.5.2+
Tested Up To: 7
PHP Version: 7.4 or higher
Author: Pascal

Support & Rating

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ 3.9
Reviews: 164
Support Threads: 0
Resolved: 0%

Keywords

Block countries Geoblocking ban countries block block spam

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TL;DR

AI summary of the plugin's readme

iQ Block Country is for WordPress site owners who want to restrict access to their site or its content based on visitor location. It lets you allow or block visitors by country or IP address, helping reduce spam, hack attempts, and unwanted backend access from specific countries.

Block or allow by country
IP address allow list
IP address block list
Restrict WordPress admin backend
Custom blocked-visitor message with CSS
Redirect blocked visitors
Content-level blocking (posts, categories, pages)
GeoIP API service option

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about iQ Block Country

It’s true that you might see hits from countries that you have blocked in your statistics software. This however does not mean this plugin does not work, it just means somebody tried to access a certain page or pages and that that fact is logged. If you are worried this plugin does not work you could try to block your own country or your own ip address and afterwards visit your frontend website and see if it actually works. Also if you have access to the logfiles of the webserver that hosts your website you can see that these visitors are actually denied with a HTTP error 403.

Other wordpress plugins handle the visitors also. They might run before iQ Block Country or they might run after iQ Block Country runs. This however does not mean this plugin does not work, it just means somebody tried to access a certain page, post or your backend and another plugin also handled the request. If you are worried this plugin does not work you could try to block your own country or your own ip address and afterwards visit your frontend website and see if it actually works. Also if you have access to the logfiles of the webserver that hosts your website you can see that these visitors are actually denied with a HTTP error 403. This plugin does not work, I blocked a country and still see visitors! Well, this plugin does in fact work but is limited to the data MaxMind provides. Also in your statistics software or logfiles you probably will see log entries from countries that you have blocked. See the "How come I still see visitors..." FAQ for that. If you think you have a visitor from a country you have blocked lookup that specific IP address on the tools tab and see which country MaxMind thinks it is. If this is not the same country you may wish to block the country that MaxMind thinks it is.

I am afraid this can only be solved by editing your MySQL database,directly editing the rows in the wp_options table. You can use a tool like PHPMyAdmin for that. If you don't know how to do this please ask your hosting provider if they can help, or ask me if I can help you out!

Well, if you can use a manual override so can the people that want to 'visit' your backend. This plugin is meant to keep people out. Perhaps you keep a key to your house somewhere hidden in your garden but this plugin does not have a key somewhere hidden... So if you locked yourself out you need to call a locksmith (or pick the lock yourself of course!)

You can style the message by using CSS in the textbox. You are also able to include images, so you could visualize that people are banned from your site. You can also provide a link to another page explaining why they might be banned. Only culprit is that it cannot be a page on the same domain name as people would be banned from that page as well. You can use for instance: body { color: red; background-color: #ffffff; } h1 { font-family: Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif } Go away! you basicly can use everything as within a normal HTML page. Including images for instance. Help! My IP address is not detected properly The iQ Block Country plugin does it's best to detect the real IP address of your visitors even if they try to hide it. However sometimes it fails in doing so and in that case you might get an different IP address for your users. For instance your webhosting IP address. You can overrule this process if it does not work properly in your case. Go to the Tools tab there is a section IP Address Information. It will show all server headers that contain IP information, see which header has your own IP address. On the home tab you can set this header where it says 'Override IP information'. You should only use this if the automatic IP detection fails otherwise please have it set to "No override"

In some circumstances: No The plugin does it best to prevent caching of the "You are blocked" message. However most caching software can be forced to cache anyway. You may or may not be able to control the behavior of the caching method. The plugin does it bests to avoid caching but under circumstances the message does get cached. Either change the behavior of your caching software or disable the plugin. If you want to block visitors from the frontend using a caching mechanism is not recommended.

You can press the CTRL key and select several countries. Perhaps also a handy function is that you can type in a part of the name of the country! You can select/deselect all countries by selecting "(de)select all countries..." If you just want to allow some countries you can also use the 'Block all countries except those selected below' function by selecting the countries you want to allow and select invert this selection.

You can download the database(s) directly from MaxMind and upload them to your website. Create an account at https://www.maxmind.com/en/geolite2/signup Login to your account.

Unzip the GeoIP2 database and upload the GeoLite2-Country.mmdb file to your upload dir usually /wp-content/uploads/GeoLite2-Country.mmdb Maxmind updates the GeoLite database every month. I get "Cannot modify header information - headers already sent" errors This is possible if another plugin or your template sends out header information before this plugin does. You can deactivate and reactivate this plugin, it will try to load as the first plugin upon activation. If this does not help you out deselect "Send headers when user is blocked". This will no longer send headers but only display the block message. This however will mess up your website if you use caching software for your website. This also does not work if you use a page or url redirect as that relies on sending headers for redirecting the visitor to another page or URL.

If you select this option each hour the plugin checks if it has new data to send back to the central server. This data consists of each IP address that has tried to login to your backend and how many attempts were made since the last check. If storing or sharing an IP address is illegal in your country do not select this feature. The laws in my country do not allow storing IP addresses as it is personal information. You can select the option on the home tab "Do not log IP addresses" to stop iQ Block Country from logging IP addresses. This will however also break the statistics. I have moved my WordPress site to another host. Now iQ Block Country cannot find the GeoIP databases anymore Somewhere in your WordPress database there is a wp_options table. In the wp_options table is an option_name called 'upload_path'. There probably is an (old) path set as option_value. If you know your way around MySQL (via PHPMyAdmin for instance) you can empty the option_value. This should fix your problem. Please note that your wp_options table may be called differently depending on your installation choices. Jetpack does not work anymore with your plugin! Jetpack uses xmlrpc.php to communicate with your site. xmlrpc.php is considered as a backend url and therefore blocked if needed. You can allow Jetpack by selecting "Jetpack by wordpress.com" as a search engine on the services tab.