Many sites run behind Cloudflare or another proxy. Without care, every visitor would appear to come from the proxy's address. The plugin reads the visitor's real address from the headers these services add, so its records stay accurate.
There is nothing to set up. It works the same on every host.
Where the address is used:
- Each email in the Collected Emails list is saved with the visitor's address.
- The detailed visit log saves the address of each visit.
- Mailchimp receives it as the sign-up address for each new subscriber.
How it finds the real address:
The plugin checks these headers in order and uses the first one that holds a valid address:
- CF-Connecting-IP, sent by Cloudflare.
- X-Forwarded-For, sent by most proxies and load balancers. When it lists several addresses, the first one is the visitor.
- X-Real-IP, sent by many Nginx proxies.
- REMOTE_ADDR, the direct connection, when there is no proxy.
A real example:
Your Site runs behind Cloudflare. When a visitor in Leeds opts in to FREE Email List Building Checklist, Cloudflare passes the visitor's own address in CF-Connecting-IP. The plugin stores that address with the subscriber, not Cloudflare's, and sends the same address to Mailchimp with the sign-up.
Tips:
- If you use a page cache with Cloudflare or another proxy, exclude your funnel addresses (/free/ by default) from caching so visitors always get fresh pages and forms. The Diagnostics tab points out caching plugins it finds.
- Bot visits are skipped from the stats whatever proxy you use. See Bot Exclusion.