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

[tribedude]

I uploaded the newest spiderlist from vbulletin, then installed this product and it seems to be working however I am getting tons of "Unknown Spider' in bold but with an URL below that identifies what the spider is... Is it normal for it to say Unknow spider like that? How do i get it to dsiplay what spider it actually is instead of the URL?

[DementedMindz]

yeah i get alot like that too... i edit the list manually when i get that and then edit it in sql.... also was wondering do you think mikelbeck if you removed the ip lookup it would cut back on the sql queries? cause it does go high when you get like 50 and above spiders plus yahoo on there i have like 30 different ips alone from yahoo

[mikelbeck]

tribedude - if the spider's data isn't in the spiderlist, it's going to show up as "unknown".

DementedMindz - I don't think that the IP lookup has much to do with sql queries, the IP data is stored with the rest of the spider data, and it's "rolled up" along with everything else.

[DementedMindz]

so is there anyway to cut back on the sql queries? and also maybe make it where only certain usergroups can see it....

[Gottcha]

Warning: array_multisort(): Argument #1 is expected to be an array or a sort flag in /spiders.php on line 223

any help is appreciated ... thanks

[Trana]

Originally Posted by tribedude

I uploaded the newest spiderlist from vbulletin, then installed this product and it seems to be working however I am getting tons of "Unknown Spider' in bold but with an URL below that identifies what the spider is... Is it normal for it to say Unknow spider like that? How do i get it to dsiplay what spider it actually is instead of the URL?

Strange, I don't see it picking up ANY of the spiders. I have everything properly defined in my XML file (using the latest definitions), and it still sees Yahoo Slurp and Googlebot and "Unknown Spider".

[DementedMindz]

working great on my site... just needs to lower the queries a bit there still way high

[Trana]

Originally Posted by DementedMindz

working great on my site... just needs to lower the queries a bit there still way high

Would you mind posting the first few lines of your spider xml file? I got mine off the spider site but I don't think it is formatted correctly.

Thanks.

[DementedMindz]

yeah i changed my format around as it didnt seem like theres was like vbulletins...


this is the top..

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<searchspiders>

and at the very bottom its closed like this:

</searchspiders>

<!-- CVS: $RCSfile: spiders_vbulletin.xml,v $ - $Revision: 1.2 $ -->

[DementedMindz]

im still adding bots to mine as i see them crawl... cause there is alot of bots they dont even have listed too