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

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by mikelbeck

New version available...

This is an "interim" release, it just fixes the two items listed below. Other functionality will be in Beta 8, coming in the next couple of days.

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)

dont know if it was supposed to do this or not, but im not getting ANY spiders now... is it supposed to show the old spiders?

[Mudvayne]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

dont know if it was supposed to do this or not, but im not getting ANY spiders now... is it supposed to show the old spiders?

Look up for instruction..

***UPGRADE NOTE***
When you upgrade from version 1.0.0 Beta 5 to 1.0.0 Beta 7 your existing spider data will be lost!

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

dont know if it was supposed to do this or not, but im not getting ANY spiders now... is it supposed to show the old spiders?

The table was emptied during the upgrade... Give it a little while, they'll show up.

[C Braithwaite]

ahh sorry - i didnt see the upgrade notice - my table didnt empty btw - got 14+ pages of spiders in mysql.. just so you know. ill empty it manually

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

ahh sorry - i didnt see the upgrade notice - my table didnt empty btw - got 14+ pages of spiders in mysql.. just so you know. ill empty it manually

If it wasn't showing any spiders after you install this version, it did empty the table. The stuff that's in the table now is what's been added since you did the upgrade.

BTW - here's what I'm planning for the next version:

- Split up the display of spiders by "type". So "searchspiders", "misc_spiders", "http_monitors" etc will each be in their own table.
- Reduce the number of IP addresses displayed, and add a link to a pop-up to show all of the IPs for a spider.
- Combine spiders that have the same name but different user agents. For example, on my site, Google shows up as "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)" and "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)". This started happening after I fixed the "unknown spiders" issue in this release, it'll be fixed in the next one.
- See if I can make it work without transactions, so it'll work with earlier versions of MySQL.

I think that's it... If you've got any suggestions post them and I'll see if I can get them done.

[StarBuG]

Make the Botname a link if a link is specified in the spider.xml
So you can directly check what spider is crawling your forum if the info is available

[C Braithwaite]

Still showing up as unknown :S http://www.mished.co.uk/forum/spiders.php

[Megareus Rex]

Just out of curiosity, why does the spider archive get cleared out every time this hack is upgraded?

[joeychgo]

Link Placement suggestion:


Place it in the footer - with a conditional so that only admins can see it:


In the footer template look for:

<if condition="$show['admincplink']"><a href="$admincpdir/index.php$session[sessionurl_q]">$vbphrase[admin]</a> -</if>

and below it add:

<if condition="$show['admincplink']"><a href="LINK TO YOUR SPIDERS.PHP FILE">Spiders</a> -</if>

You can put this same link anywhere else you would like, and only admins will see it.

[mikelbeck]

Thanks for posting that, Joey. Which of your sites are you running this on?

Megareus Rex - the tables only need to be cleared if there's an update to the tables.