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

[jw00dy]

This is cool *installed*

Does this new version take some time before it shows any spiders? I'm guessing it does. I'm going to see if I can kick some spiders over to check my forums and gen some stats.

Thanks

[ILTK]

Sweet, thanks for the update, my hostings cpanel is dog slow so I used it alot instead of going into awstats to see spidering trends.

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by jw00dy

This is cool *installed*

Does this new version take some time before it shows any spiders? I'm guessing it does. I'm going to see if I can kick some spiders over to check my forums and gen some stats.

Thanks

Yes, the rollup runs once an hour, so it'll take that time until you see some stats. I looked at your site, I see Google and MSN on the spiders page. ;-)

[Mudvayne]

mikelbeck.. Any plan to release it for vB 3.6 ?

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by Shuvo

mikelbeck.. Any plan to release it for vB 3.6 ?

Once I can upgrade my sites to 3.6 and test it, yes.

Does it not work with 3.6?

[jw00dy]

Originally Posted by mikelbeck

Yes, the rollup runs once an hour, so it'll take that time until you see some stats. I looked at your site, I see Google and MSN on the spiders page. ;-)

Sure enough, thank you. I love it. I'm always wondering if I'm getting index'd. :up: and by who...

[Hornstar]

Okay I will know in an hour if it is working fine with Vbulletin 3.6 Gold. The installation went fine, The instructions was a bit confusing for the cron job, hopefully I have set that up correctly for the hourly run of it. (Maybe that could be re-worded to be more noob friendly for people like myself ^^ lol)

[blogtorank]

Originally Posted by hornstar1337

Okay I will know in an hour if it is working fine with Vbulletin 3.6 Gold. The installation went fine, The instructions was a bit confusing for the cron job, hopefully I have set that up correctly for the hourly run of it. (Maybe that could be re-worded to be more noob friendly for people like myself ^^ lol)

Hope this helps you or anyone else that needs help in the cron per his instructions, here is a visual for you inside a cPanel CRON Job area see the attachment below

[Nathan2006]

Originally Posted by mikelbeck

***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!

I have just upgraded it and all the spider counts are still there

Working great! now 8 queries less and very pleased with this

Thank you

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by Nathan2006

I have just upgraded it and all the spider counts are still there

Right, it said when you upgrade from Beta 7 to Beta 8, you just upgraded to Beta 10 so this line doesn't apply.

Working great! now 8 queries less and very pleased with this

Thank you

Good to hear!