Support

First, I'd like to explain why this reply came late to you. You contacted us around 11pm and again around 5am our time. Support is provided by the same developers writing the software, all of which live in Europe. We typically work between 9 am and 7 pm Cyprus timezone (EEST). Tickets or replies filed after around 6 pm are unlikely to be responded to until the next day, when we're back at the office.

Regarding your first question, this button appears when your apparent IP address is in one of the following pages:

• Auto IP blocking administration. These are the temporarily blocked IP addresses.
• Auto IP blocking history. This is the history of previous temporarily blocked IP addresses. Most likely your IP is here since you are currently not blocked (obviously!) but you still see the button. Why? Most likely because you did get blocked at some point and that automatic block expired.
• Site IP blacklist. This is a list of permanently blacklisted IP addresses. Your IP might also be here if you have also white-listed it (white-listing takes priority over blacklisting).

Clicking the button removes records with your IP from all three places and also the Security Exceptions Log. This will make the button go away. Therefore you should click on it.

If you are not sure which is the apparent IP address, i.e. the IP address Joomla and your server see, please go to Components, Admin Tools, Web Application Firewall, Geographic Blocking. In the "What is this" box at the top of the page you will see what is your IP address, as reported by your server. If that IP, despite using Enable IP Workarounds, is NOT the IP address you use to connect to the Internet you need to contact your hosting provider and let them know that their server is behind a misbehaving proxy which does not generate an X-Forwarded-For HTTP header (or generates an incorrect one). Since they'd probably take a while to get back to you, you will probably have to disable Admin Tools' system plugin to prevent your site becoming blocked while you are advertising it. Far from ideal but in this case your host would be to blame for this.

That said, I am pretty sure that the simplest resolution to your issue is actually clicking the button, something that Davide assumed you did. Reading your ticket, especially the first message, I know you never tried. So Davide was trying to figure out why the button keeps appearing after clicking it whereas you wanted to know why it's there and whether or why should you click on it.

As a side note, if you think that clicking that button is a "hassle" as you said, what would you say about the manual alternative (Step 2 on that page)? I think that the manual process is a hassle, indeed. Clicking a button is not. If you see a way to improve it, please do tell me. We appreciate user feedback. Some issues, even obvious ones, are easier to spot when you're not the one who introduced them in the first place :)

Hm, I am not sure if we added the IP display after the last release. It seems to be the case, so you're right, the IP is not there. If you have enabled the IP blacklist feature in the Configure WAF page you will see the IP if you go to the Site IP Blacklist page in the Web Application Firewall page. I don't think we display the IP anywhere else.

Yes, I read the other ticket. It sounds like something weird is going on with the way the host reports the IP. The next version will tell you what IP the server reports but beyond that there's nothing we can do. We have to rely on the IP – relayed to Joomla by your host – and the third part MaxMind GeoIP database to resolve IPs into countries. The free MaxMind database only claims 90% accuracy. Their commercial version goes up to 95%. That's the main reason I have said that GeoIP blocking is a bad idea to begin with. How easy it is to bypass for anyone who can use Google is the other.