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

[funinthesun]

Thanks! Mine is working now aswell and yes I'm running MySQL3 so looks like we have a fix

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by Robbed

I figured it out, It's most likely because we are using sql version lower then 4.0. Start Transaction is only used in 4 and higher.

I opened up spiders.php line 47

replaced




with



so far it's working.

What does the "BEGIN" command do? Is it the same as "START TRANSACTION" in later versions?

[Robbed]

Originally Posted by mikelbeck

What does the "BEGIN" command do? Is it the same as "START TRANSACTION" in later versions?

ya, i was looking at what was new in 4.0

Added START TRANSACTION (SQL-99 syntax) as alias for BEGIN. This is recommended to use instead of BEGIN to start a transaction.

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by Robbed

ya, i was looking at what was new in 4.0

Ah, good. Thanks for that info, I'll add a check to see what version of MySQL it is and will use "BEGIN" for < 4 and "START TRANSACTION" for 4 and above in the next version.

[Zia]

helo mikelbeck..
hope ur going to release a new version.....
currently the page showing known & un-known spider

i think it can devided in few more portion

1.Seachengine Spider
2.Blog/Validator [Html,css,rss,xhtml,ror -all kinds of validator]
3.Feed Finder [all kinds of rss/xml feed finder or updater]
4.Misc or Unknown

currently the page showing the url bellow the bots nick...it would be nice if the <info> [robotstxt.org's url] line of the list.xml showed bellow the nick nick

after all of that..i would like to thankx u A LOT...cos w/o this i cant never relaise..which/how much spider we get in our site......

Thnx

[mikelbeck]

Take a look, let me know if this is what you're talking about: http://www.happyhourpub.com/spiders.php

[Zia]

yeah all most right...
i gez u catagorise spider in happyhourpub : Search Spider , http_monitoring,linkchecker,unknown
- Its not showing its Ip (Clickable details).
-Unknown spider block: ,spider name mentioned Unknown Spider Ipselonbot/1.14-beta (+http://www.ipselon.com/intl/en/ipselonbot.html)

Could it be devided: Searchspider,http_monitoring,Linkchecker,Rss/Blog Spider/Bot,Misc(Misc inclided unknown ,but in the Spider name "Unknown Spider" should not be mentioned.As much as info possible show.
- IP address(klikable list)

in every block every spider/bots as much as info possible to show.

umm but could u say..with this hack there is no relation with spiderlist.xml ?
im asking coz.some spider i found that they arent listed in the spiderlist.xml.
im not that xpert...could u plz tell me?

one more thing is there any way during upgrade previous spiders details (hit,time) all lost, how to prevent it?

Thnx.

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by Zia

yeah all most right...
i gez u catagorise spider in happyhourpub : Search Spider , http_monitoring,linkchecker,unknown
- Its not showing its Ip (Clickable details).

IPs are only shown to users with permission to see IPs, which are admins in most cases.

-Unknown spider block: ,spider name mentioned Unknown Spider Ipselonbot/1.14-beta (+http://www.ipselon.com/intl/en/ipselonbot.html)

If the item is listed in the spiders_vbulletin.xml file as "unknown", it's going to be grouped with the "unknown" spiders. If the spider presents a user agent (like this one did), it'll be shown.

Could it be devided: Searchspider,http_monitoring,Linkchecker,Rss/Blog Spider/Bot,Misc(Misc inclided unknown ,but in the Spider name "Unknown Spider" should not be mentioned.As much as info possible show.

Only if that information is in the spiders_vbulletin.xml file, which it isn't.

umm but could u say..with this hack there is no relation with spiderlist.xml ?
im asking coz.some spider i found that they arent listed in the spiderlist.xml.
im not that xpert...could u plz tell me?

It gets it's information from the vbulletin_spiders.xml file (the one in includes/xml).

one more thing is there any way during upgrade previous spiders details (hit,time) all lost, how to prevent it?

Thnx.

That only occurs if there is a database change from the previous version. So far, the one I'm working on now (beta 9) has no databases changes so that data won't be lost.

[Zia]

that means..i must modify my vbulletin_spiders.xml to grouped/devided all the spider ?
i am curious there are some rss discovery/blog spider arent listed in the vbulletin_spiders.xml . I download the latest vbulletin_spiders.xml from vb.com
therad :http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...ghlight=spider
download:http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showp...5&postcount=12

even there arent listed...


i also collect some spider url from urs spiderwatcher (plz dont remove detilas info)


Thankx waiting for new release.

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by Zia

that means..i must modify my vbulletin_spiders.xml to grouped/devided all the spider ?
i am curious there are some rss discovery/blog spider arent listed in the vbulletin_spiders.xml . I download the latest vbulletin_spiders.xml from vb.com
therad :http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...ghlight=spider
download:http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showp...5&postcount=12

even there arent listed...

Yes, you can just add them to the end of that file, and then they'll be displayed properly in the spider listing.

Thankx waiting for new release.

A few days, I've got one last issue to work out then I'll put it out. This may be the final release... I'll leave it in Beta for a week or so, as long as there's no issues I'll put it out as a final release.