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

[tracylee]

I tried uninstalling this for a client as we're slimming down for a server move.
I got a call that guests were unable to view the forum. I logged out and got a database error. Followed earlier advice to view source on the page and found that it was still trying to insert my information as a guest into the now gone "bots" table.

I read through the xml file and found that the hook is global_start, so I looked at the global.php file, and sure enough, the SQL query to insert data is still in there.

I'm not sure what about uninstalling should have turned that off? The plugins were gone, the templates were gone - I had to create the table again just to finish researching it.

Anyway, just thought that this might be helpful if anyone else hits a problem uninstalling.

[Zia]

any more update news ?

[Snake]

Yeah we have been waiting for months now...

[Zia]

Knock Knock Mikel Beck
Ur at home???

[4yBak]

Originally Posted by 4yBak

I'm still waiting fix for this bug - https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=396

already 2 month goes and nothing news from author of this hack. Are you will be support this hack or not?

Also I have few suggestions:
- create an option or to do it by default that column with Unknown spiders can see only admin. It's need because many user replace in his browsers User-Agent for obscene language etc. and all this information will index search spiders
- add checkbox opposite each row and add button Remove selected rows. So... we can remove some records that not needed just from spiders.php file. Sure, this checkbox must be displayed only for specifed usergroup (for example administrator). It will be very comfortable

[Zia]

working with vb3.6.4 ?

any news on reduce SQL load ?

[Zia]

any news for 3.6.4 ?

[Snake]

Yep.

[4yBak]

I don't know why in hack info checked value Supported if support is ...

This hack very good, but without support it not needed

[Ohiosweetheart]

This works perfectly on my 3.6.4 board