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

[ILTK]

Something I been wondering, why is it that the hits seem to update allways, but the last visit date doesn't allways update?

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by ILTK

Something I been wondering, why is it that the hits seem to update allways, but the last visit date doesn't allways update?

I'll look into that, I think it has something to do with how the data is selected during the rollup. The latest timestamped record may not be the last record selected, so the timestamp is wrong. I think, I'm not positive...

[jw00dy]

Not sure if anyone has said this yet, but this seems to be working fine on vB 3.6.0 Gold

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by jw00dy

Not sure if anyone has said this yet, but this seems to be working fine on vB 3.6.0 Gold

Good to hear.

[ninjashoes]

Originally Posted by ILTK

Something I been wondering, why is it that the hits seem to update allways, but the last visit date doesn't allways update?

Since I upgraded my last visits arent updating at all.

[ninjashoes]

It seems as though the task dissapeared, I readded it but am not sure what to put for the Varname section. My last visit time still isnt updating, when its a new spider then it shows up but for google the last time it shows was before I upgraded to 3.6

[blind-eddie]

Add a link to spiders.php on your navbar or footer.???
If this is correct:http://outerzone.us/forum/includes/spiders.php or http://www.outerzone.us/spiders.php I'm getting a 404 error
Yes I'm a noob....Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Neal-UK]

Originally Posted by blind-eddie

Add a link to spiders.php on your navbar or footer.???
If this is correct:http://outerzone.us/forum/includes/spiders.php or http://www.outerzone.us/spiders.php I'm getting a 404 error
Yes I'm a noob....Any help would be greatly appreciated.

http://www.outerzone.us/forum/spiders.php

[blind-eddie]

Amesome Thank You for helping me out

[blind-eddie]

Originally Posted by mikelbeck

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

http://outerzone.us/forum/spiders.php