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

[maranello]

am I the only one having this unknown spider bot problem?

I dont have a SINGLE known spider in the list:

http://www.total-clan.com/forums/spiders.php

I have the LATEST xml file, I formatted it right, chmod is right, everything is right. What's wrong?

[MThornback]

99% of the time mine are unknown too...I used the spiders from hambil's BOL hack, and it gives me a known one every once in a blue moon...but the googlebot, MSNbot both show up...so it might be a step in the direction your after.

[blogtorank]

***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 almost posted where did they go however glad this is there!

[dwbro1]

Why is adv_index showing up in the list I thought this was replaced when I renamed it to index.php, or am I just loosing my mind.

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by dwbro1

Why is adv_index showing up in the list I thought this was replaced when I renamed it to index.php, or am I just loosing my mind.

You could be losing your mind, but that's something you'll have to deal with on your own. ;-)

That page probably calls itself adv_index (in the code of the page), so that's what the spider watcher sees when the page is loaded. You can rename the file to whatever you want, but if you don't change the code it'll still have it's original name.

BTW - don't go changing the page's name if you don't know what you're doing... It's used in other places than just the file itself, if you just change it there you can screw other stuff up.

[Zia]

Hello..
the spider list in vbulletin.com now being updated...get it from there
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showp...5&postcount=12
Thanx to Stadler

also thnx to mikel..unless this watcher it wasnt possible to get all those spiders name

umm can u say..now most of the spider is now being catagorised...
after update the new spiderlist.....
unknown spider will changed to known spider?

can u have look on this lists catagori & update the watchers catagory stats..

plz give a serious thought abt sql query.
[high]* Zia offer mikel an ice cold chilled bear[/high]

[Svenna]

hi mike,

here my german translation.

bye und best regards,
svenna

[kofoid]

mine isn't working either..... no spiders display

[DementedMindz]

the format that is used on vbulletin.com wont work with it... even the one zia post wont either... i posted a few pages back a working one... the format they have one vbulletin.com is wrong and its not even like that stock so i have no clue why they update the list there cause its still a wrong format

[TheBlackPoet]

i guess i dont know enough about spiders to ask the right questions.. but i do know enough to read threads to determine what is good or bad for my forum. and i guess some spiders are good for search engine purposes... while others milk your bandwidth....i installed this watcher, but i am now looking for a bad spider SNIPER.....
any ideas?