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WPBeginner» Blog» Tutorials» How to Display a User’s IP Address in WordPress

How to Display a User’s IP Address in WordPress

Last updated on March 20th, 2014 by Editorial Staff
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How to Display a User’s IP Address in WordPress

Recently one of our users asked us if it was possible to detect and display individual visitors’ IP address in WordPress. Our answer was of course it is. In this article, we will show you how to display user’s IP address in WordPress.

You can use this to create your own IP detection site. This way when a website visitor views your site, they can see their own IP address.

All you have to do is paste the following snippet in your theme’s functions.php file or in a site-specific plugin.

// Display User IP in WordPress


function get_the_user_ip() {
if ( ! empty( $_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP'] ) ) {
//check ip from share internet
$ip = $_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP'];
} elseif ( ! empty( $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'] ) ) {
//to check ip is pass from proxy
$ip = $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'];
} else {
$ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
}
return apply_filters( 'wpb_get_ip', $ip );
}

add_shortcode('show_ip', 'get_the_user_ip');

Next thing you need to do is add the following shortcode in your post, page, or in a sidebar widget.

[show_ip]

If you’re using the shortcode in your sidebar text widget, and it is not working, then you need to make sure that you enable shortcode for sidebar widgets.

We hope this article helped you display user’s IP address in your WordPress site. If you have any questions or feedback, then please leave us a comment below.

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24 Comments

Leave a Reply
  1. Christopher says:
    Jan 13, 2019 at 9:40 am

    Great article! Is it also possible to show visitors country?

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Jan 14, 2019 at 2:25 pm

      That would require some advanced php or a plugin, we don’t have a recommended method at the moment.

      Reply
  2. Lathif says:
    Apr 5, 2018 at 12:41 pm

    unfortunately there is still a weakness of the function, that is the problem of “cache”.
    visitors will see the same ip address (even if the router is restarted) when they are not clearing “cache” in the browser.

    Reply
  3. Pamela says:
    Jun 12, 2017 at 4:29 pm

    Is there a way to display the user’s country flag with this code?

    Thanks.

    Reply
  4. Lloyd says:
    Feb 22, 2017 at 3:07 pm

    How about a city or state instead of IP?

    Reply
  5. Beatriz says:
    Nov 25, 2016 at 10:43 am

    Where can I see the IP’s collected? and should I paste the snippet of the code on the top of my function.php code?

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Nov 25, 2016 at 8:01 pm

      Paste the code at the bottom of your functions.php file. You will have to use shortcode [show_ip] inside a text widget. See our guide on how to add and use widgets in WordPress.

      Reply
  6. Brigitte Scherieble says:
    Aug 16, 2016 at 8:03 am

    hey,
    I am from Germany and I am not a computer freak. But I have the job to find out of the client IP (out of Google Analytics) the Company of the visiter. Can you help me?

    Reply
  7. Evan says:
    Aug 9, 2016 at 12:34 pm

    This works great, thank you! Is there any way to have it also display the hostname, perhaps with a separate shortcode?

    Reply
  8. Reuben Tinto says:
    May 6, 2016 at 5:50 am

    Hi,

    Is it possible to obtain the IP of a previous blog visitor trough this method? If not are you aware of any other courses of action I can take?

    Also will I be able to access code if I do not have a premium wordpress account?
    I have been trying to locate the IP of an anonymous twitter troll and would really appreciate some help! :)

    Reuben

    Reply
  9. Mike says:
    Apr 12, 2016 at 5:19 pm

    Thanks for the tutorial. Please excuse if this is a dumb question but I’m new to working with WordPress.

    If I want to store the visitors IP address along with the date and time they visited a post, should I create a separate mysql database table or is there an existing wp table that collects this information that I can retrieve?

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Apr 12, 2016 at 9:44 pm

      WordPress only stores vistor’s information in the database if they decide to leave a comment. You can create a separate database to collect this information if you want.

      Reply
    • Mohammad Mursaleen says:
      Jun 7, 2016 at 2:44 am

      Creating a table for such functionality in WordPress is not an efficient move. I would prefer to do this using custom post type.

      I have answered a similar question over here;

      Reply
  10. Vivek Digarse says:
    Feb 10, 2016 at 1:44 am

    Thanks !

    Reply
  11. John says:
    Apr 9, 2015 at 12:08 am

    Thanks for this, works fine.
    But is it possible to use this to monitor new user subscriptions?

    Reply
  12. alexander kochubey says:
    Mar 11, 2015 at 4:21 pm

    Thanks for reply, I’ll modify some plugin for some system, I’ll describe it later

    Reply
  13. meera says:
    Mar 24, 2014 at 3:14 am

    HI
    Thank you so much…. it works fine……..

    Reply
  14. Abhisek Padhi says:
    Mar 19, 2014 at 11:19 am

    @pippin you are correct. Your code worked fine, but wpbeginner’s code was also working fine.

    Reply
  15. Doug Hall says:
    Mar 19, 2014 at 10:40 am

    Display it where? I don’t understand the post at all.

    Reply
    • as says:
      Oct 4, 2014 at 8:19 pm

      Everywhere use shortcode [show_ip]

      Reply
  16. Pippin Williamson says:
    Mar 19, 2014 at 9:38 am

    It should probably be noted that $_SERVER[‘REMOTE_ADDR’] will not always retrieve the IP properly.

    If the user is on a shared connection, you will need to use $_SERVER[‘HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR’].

    If the user is behind a proxy, you will need to use $_SERVER[‘HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR’].

    The IP can also be present in $_SERVER[‘HTTP_CLIENT_IP’].

    To properly get the IP reliably, something like this should be used:

    function get_the_user_ip() {
    if ( ! empty( $_SERVER[‘HTTP_CLIENT_IP’] ) ) {
    //check ip from share internet
    $ip = $_SERVER[‘HTTP_CLIENT_IP’];
    } elseif ( ! empty( $_SERVER[‘HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR’] ) ) {
    //to check ip is pass from proxy
    $ip = $_SERVER[‘HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR’];
    } else {
    $ip = $_SERVER[‘REMOTE_ADDR’];
    }
    return apply_filters( ‘edd_get_ip’, $ip );
    }

    Reply
    • Pippin Williamson says:
      Mar 19, 2014 at 9:39 am

      Formatted version: https://gist.github.com/pippinsplugins/9641841

      Reply
      • WPBeginner Support says:
        Mar 20, 2014 at 1:18 pm

        Thanks Pippin, we have updated the article.

        Reply
  17. Chris Black says:
    Mar 19, 2014 at 9:32 am

    Always worth noting that although you can read the IP address with PHP that it may not be useful because people have shared IP addresses, dynamic IP, access websites from different networks/locations and because it is possible to fake the IP address that PHP sees. So – only use an IP address with caution.

    Reply

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