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

[eViL_sTiGmA]

Now works, thank you, i love it =D

[Snake]

Whoa just installed this hack and works great! Thanks bro!

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by Aftermath

Whoa just installed this hack and works great! Thanks bro!

Nice to hear that!

Do you have a link to where you have it installed?

[puertoblack2003]

Originally Posted by swa

doesn't work on 3.51

it do work got it installed. :ermm:

[silurius]

I don't know why, but I love this hack!

*Clicks install

Could you briefly outline the justification for watching spiders? Is there a real business or security benefit, or is it just satisfying?

Also, I assume there is no security risk associated with allowing any old viewer to view the Spider Watcher page?

[Allan]

Thanks

Click Install

[Hornstar]

I'm going to install this as i requested this a while back. This is what i've been looking for ^^

nice work. Hope to see more from you

[bashy]

Hi

Thanks for this, I have installed,
Working very well thanks
Heres the link for the working hack

http://www.bashys-place.com/forums/spiders.php

Regards

Bashy

[Lizard King]

Working pretty good thanks

i have the latest vbulletin_spiders.xml but i still get unknown spiders.
Check the list http://www.ayyas.com/spiders.php

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by silurius

I don't know why, but I love this hack!

*Clicks install

Could you briefly outline the justification for watching spiders? Is there a real business or security benefit, or is it just satisfying?

Also, I assume there is no security risk associated with allowing any old viewer to view the Spider Watcher page?

I think it's just satisfiying, to know that your hard work on the SEO for your forum attracts spiders... And with this you can see when their last visit was, and how many pages they've viewed.

As for being a security risk, I don't see how it would be.