Spider Watcher
 

Spider Watcher
Author: Mikel Beck (mikel.beck@elite-computing.net)

This hack keeps track of the spiders (Search Engine robots) that visit your fourm. Every time a guest visits a page, the guest's IP address, user agent and the page they visited are logged to the database.

When somebody views the spider statistics page, this data is "rolled up", meaning the raw data is collated, the spider's name is determined by comparing the user agent to data contained in the spiders_bulletin.xml file, and the number of pages and visits is summarized and writted back to the database. In addition, and data from non-bots is removed.

The data is then displayed in a easy to read format for your viewing pleasure.

If the user viewing the report has permissions to view IP addresses, these are displayed as well.

A live version of the report from one of my sites can be seen here: http://www.happyhourpub.com/spiders.php

Also see the attached screenshot for an exmaple.


Revision History:
1.0.0 Beta 1 - 01/05/2006
- Initial Release

1.0.0 Beta 2 - 01/06/2006
- Included templates for spiders.php
- Removed text from templates, added them as phrases

1.0.0 Beta 3 - 01/07/2006
- Split up the display of "known" and "unknown" spiders

1.0.0 Beta 4 - 01/25/2006
- Corrected potentional SQL injection issue in plug-in
- Reduced the number of SQL queries required to display statistics
- Corrected date/time display issue

1.0.0 Beta 5 - 02/01/2006
- Reduced the number of SQL queries required to display statistics

1.0.0 Beta 6 - 02/08/2006
- No release

1.0.0 Beta 7 - 02/11/2006
- Corrected issue with "unknown" spiders not being displayed properly.
- Added tracking of the type of spider (searchspider, link checker, etc)

1.0.0 Beta 8 - 02/19/2006
- Change the display of IP addresses to be a pop-up so they're all not displayed on the main page.
- Combined the spiders that have the same name but different user agents.

1.0.0 Beta 9 - 03/10/2006
- Changed the display to group similar spiders together (search spiders, http check spiders, etc)

1.0.0 Beta 10 - 08/08/2006
- Changed how the rollup functions. Instead of rolling up every time somebody views the spider page, it rolls up once per hour.
- Corrected a few bugs here and there, mostly related to removing entries from the database.

Installation Instructions
1. Upload spiders.php to the root of your forum.
2. Upload spiders_rollup.php to the includes/cron directory.
3. Import the file product-spiderwatcher.xml using the Manage Products module.
4. Add a link to spiders.php on your navbar or footer.
5. Add a cron job with the following information:
Title: Spider Watcher Rollup
Day of the Week: *
Day of the Month: *
Hour: *
Minute: 0 - - -
Log entries: Yes
Filename: ./includes/cron/spiders_rollup.php

Upgrade Instructions
1. Upload (and overwrite) spiders to the root of your forum.
2. Upload spiders_rollup.php to the includes/cron directory.
3. Import the file product-spiderwatcher.xml using the Manage Products module. Make sure the "Allow Overwrite" option is set to "Yes".
4. Add a link to spiders.php on your navbar or footer.
5. Add a cron job with the following information:
Title: Spider Watcher Rollup
Day of the Week: *
Day of the Month: *
Hour: *
Minute: 0 - - -
Log entries: Yes
Filename: ./includes/cron/spiders_rollup.php

***UPGRADE NOTE***
When you upgrade from version 1.0.0 Beta 7 to 1.0.0 Beta 8 your existing spider data will be lost!

To make sure that you can decode the maximum amount of spiders, you should grab the latest spiderlist.xml and replace the spiders_vbulletin.xml file in your forumhome/includes/xml/ directory with the one from this thread: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=76662

nice, I'll check it out later on :)

How do i see spiders who visited my site????

just go to www.mysite.com/forum/spiders.php

??

doesn't work on 3.51

I've just realized that the required templates aren't included in the zip file.

Sorry about that, I'll correct this in the morning and will post an updated archive.

Its Nice...really nice...been looking for it...for a long time....but what about the spider list? did that detect allmost all spider or only common few like yahoo,google,msn...
els this there are many spiders are out there....hope it is able to detect all of spider...

Thanx

It will detect any of the spiders listed in this file:

The way it sits now it's not working, I'm having an issue with the templates for the spiders.php page. I'll have a functional version in the morning. Sorry for this.

The zip file for this hack has been updated to include the templates for spiders.php. If you have already installed this, you can re-install it, just be sure to check the "Allow Overwite" is checked when you upload the xml.

Beta 2 of this modification is available.

- Included templates for spiders.php
- Removed text from templates, added them as phrases

Upgrade Instructions
1. Uninstall the previous version using the Manage Products module.
2. Upload (and overwrite) spiders to the root of your forum.
3. Import the file product-spiderwatcher.xml using the Manage Products module.
4. Add a link to spiders.php on your navbar or footer.

To the people who have installed this - can you post a link to your spiders page?

2 thumbs on the spiders... :)

Now works, thank you, i love it =D

Whoa just installed this hack and works great! Thanks bro!

Nice to hear that!

Do you have a link to where you have it installed?

it do work got it installed. :ermm:

I don't know why, but I love this hack!

*Clicks install

Could you briefly outline the justification for watching spiders? Is there a real business or security benefit, or is it just satisfying?

Also, I assume there is no security risk associated with allowing any old viewer to view the Spider Watcher page?

Thanks ;)

Click Install

I'm going to install this as i requested this a while back. This is what i've been looking for ^^

nice work. Hope to see more from you :D

Hi

Thanks for this, I have installed,
Working very well thanks :)
Heres the link for the working hack ;)

http://www.bashys-place.com/forums/spiders.php

Regards

Bashy

Working pretty good thanks

i have the latest vbulletin_spiders.xml but i still get unknown spiders.
Check the list http://www.ayyas.com/spiders.php

I think it's just satisfiying, to know that your hard work on the SEO for your forum attracts spiders... And with this you can see when their last visit was, and how many pages they've viewed.

As for being a security risk, I don't see how it would be.

Dear mikelbeck

Thankx..for this too kool hack...but when u r gonna relase final version...

and one more point....if guest access is disable in forum..then can spider crawl the forum?
If Not..Any way that can makes spider crwal the forum ????
It changes db...hope it wont create any probs in sql db..

:) ALso Looking For More Modified hack...

Thankx...waiting for final version ....



If Not...can u make that the spider can crawl forum..if guest access disable.

I've got one or two things I'd like to add/change on this. Once that's done, I'll leave it in beta for a little while to make sure there's no issues, and once that's done then I'll release the 1.0.0 version.

No, I'm pretty sure you need to allow guest access to your forums for the spiders to get in. The spiders don't log in with a vBulletin username, so they are guests.

Not that I'm aware of. Unless you enable the archive and allow guests to view that, I guess.

It doesn't.

What else would you want to see in it?

That's got nothing to do with this hack, that has to do with how you configure your forum.

Hi

Is there anyway to make a Unkown spider know?
I have the upto date spider xml, so not sure why it would be like this?

Bashy

No, it's only able to decode those that are listed in the updated xml file. You could update your xml file, or ask the people who are maintaining it to add the spiders that you're seeing.

ok no worries thanks anyway, great hack :)

Bashy

works well .. thanks!

/me clicks install.

Looks like its working ok in 3.5.0 patched :)

Any easy way to add the whats going on or more importantly the who's online to the page ?

Do you mean the box that's display at the bottom of forumhome?

I would think that you could just copy that block from the forumhome template and put it into the spiderwatcher_spiders template.

Hi

I am also interested in this, could you please tell me exactly the right code to copy from forumhome and to exactly where to put it please?

Regards

Bashy

That would just display the block and images with no info. Guess I will have to try an find the php code in vb files and take pot luck on adding it to the spiders.php

Thanks that works great best click install there aswell ;)


Iv noticed this spider product also detects JumpD's RSS article bot as an unknown spider.

I dont mind that as it shows that bots hit counter aswell but how would I add to the spiders xml file this bot which has an ip of 0.0.0.0 and i dont think it has an agent but I maybe wrong so it shows as say Articlebot instead of unknown ?

Tidy hack, thanks.

I notice that the last visited date is out though. I only installed a few minutes ago but the few spiders already listed are showing "Yesterday". Time is correct, but it should be "Today".

Clicked install...

Version 1.0.0 Beta 3 is available.

1.0.0 Beta 3 - 01/07/2006
- Split up the display of "known" and "unknown" spiders

Upgrade Instructions
1. Upload (and overwrite) spiders.php to the root of your forum.
2. Import the file product-spiderwatcher.xml using the Manage Products module. Make sure the "Allow Overwrite" option is set to "Yes".
3. Add a link to spiders.php on your navbar or footer.

Thankx Man.. for real kool support..


-Unknown Spider
Googlebot-Image/1.0 01-07-2006
01:09 AM 66.249.65.202 errordocs 2

-Unknown Spider
Mozilla/3.01 (compatible;) 01-07-2006
03:48 AM 69.88.30.146, 202.52.197.55, 202.52.197.56, 210.50.143.21 cron, errordocs 213

-Unknown Spider
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Google Desktop) 01-07-2006
11:55 AM 70.236.181.179 errordocs, external 7



umm one spider hit 213 times..its detected as unknown spider..
can u plz mark them?? and most of time it face errordoc..
how could we detect that..right where it face error doc?
we need to know which bot see error doc in where?


and which bot is doing harm to forum...any way to detect from the tracker page?

plz thanks...help us

Hi..

What i find intersting is the fact that all the spiders are showing as being online 20 hours ago...I know for a fact that most have been in all day long, they very rarely leave ;) so how can it be saying 20hrs ago or should i say why is it saying 20 when it clearly isnt lol

Please advise?

Bashy

That is strange...

The only thing I can think is that the server time zone is set to something different from what yours is.

What the plugin does is write a record into the database, and the timestamp it uses is "NOW()", which is the current time. I think it uses the server's current time, but I'm not positive. So if the server's time is different from your time (if it's set to GMT, for example, and your time zone is GMT-4), then the times will be different.

I'll have a look to see if it can be set to the board's current time instead of using the "NOW()" function.

Hi mikelbeck

Cheers for the quick response...
The server is in the UK as i am therefore we are on the same timezone :)

Bashy

Can you go into your admin control panel, click on "Maintenenace", then "Diagnostics", then select "MySQL Variables" in the "System Information" box and click "Submit". What value does it show for "timezone", and what is your timezone? And also, what is your forum's timezone set to?

Hi m8

MySQL Variables
system_time_zone GMT

My time zone is GMT
Forum Timezone is GMT also

I dont suppose this helps you any now does it lol

Bashy