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

[nicedreams]

There is a html coding error in the template.

There is a <thead> but not used or needed towards the top of the template.

Jim

[kenanulas]

how ı can ı put it into footer

[Mudvayne]

Originally Posted by kenanulas

how ı can ı put it into footer

in ur footer template search for..

				<a href="#top" onclick="self.scrollTo(0, 0); return false;">$vbphrase[top]</a>

& add just above.. ( for all user )

<a href="$vboptions[homeurl]/forum/spiders.php">Spider Activity</a>

or for just admin..

				<if condition="$permissions['adminpermissions']"><a href="$vboptions[homeurl]/forum/spiders.php">Spider Activity</a>  </if> |

[Murty]

If anyone is interested. If you would only like admins to be able to view the 'Spiders' link in the navbar. Do the following.

1. Locate the 'Navbar' template.
2. Find:

<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="spiders.php$session[sessionurl_q]">Spiders</a></td>

3. Replace with:

<if condition="$show['admincplink']"><td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="spiders.php$session[sessionurl_q]">Spiders</a></td></if>

Should work.

[Mudvayne]

Originally Posted by Murty

3. Replace with:

<if condition="$show['admincplink']"><td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="spiders.php$session[sessionurl_q]">Spiders</a></td></if>

Should work.

Yes.. It 'll work.. But its not the proper way I guess..

[nicedreams]

No known spiders have shown up since i've upgraded to beta 7.

Jim

[mikelbeck]

Beta 8 is now available.

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.

Upgrade Instructions
1. Upload (and overwrite) spiders 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.

***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

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by nicedreams

There is a html coding error in the template.

There is a <thead> but not used or needed towards the top of the template.

Jim

This has been corrected in Beta 8. Thanks for letting me know about it.

DB error importing the update.

Database error in vBulletin 3.5.3:

Invalid SQL:
INSERT INTO vb3_spider_watcher (nice_bot, bot, ip_address, page, type, timestamp) VALUES ('Unknown Spider','Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1','1113786890','showthread','', NOW());

MySQL Error : Table mydatabasename-removed.vb3_spider_watcher' doesn't exist
Error Number : 1146
Date : Sunday, February 19th 2006 @ 02:54:15 PM
Username : Unregistered
Classname : vb_database

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by Chris-777

DB error importing the update.

When you installed it, did you "allow overwrite"?

Can you try to re-install it?