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

[Zia]

Originally Posted by 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

DementedMindz..
its really a strange matter...it should not be wrong..its published by Stadler on vb.com.

And the latest one is working for me. the new spider is listed/update/entried there..they are showing over on my spiders.php page..

do u mind to drop few lines on vb.com ,in the thread regarding the error u found ?

I think :
let me xplain :
a site got a spider Google-feedfetcher - 100 times.

Google-Feedfetcher : wastnt listed on the old spiderlist.xml , so it was appeared as un-known spider's block.

after replace the new spiderlist.xml : if again google-feedfecther spider again crawl the site
visit no#101(100 times on old list.xml) , it will be appeard in rss-spider block.

The old data base will not be modified...
its my point of view.

Edit: plz see this hacks description mikelbeck refer the same thread of vb.com. So i dont think mikel use any other format.

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

Thnx.

[DementedMindz]

Originally Posted by Zia

DementedMindz..
its really a strange matter...it should not be wrong..its published by Stadler on vb.com.

And the latest one is working for me. the new spider is listed/update/entried there..they are showing over on my spiders.php page..

take a look at stock vbulletin and take a look at stadlers its wrong... i have fixed it on mine but i dont use this no more as of the high number of queries on that page... alot of members here were saying it wasnt working for them either and then once i posted mine with how the format was with the stock vbulletin file it worked perfect for them... i havent looked at the file now but it was way off last time...

here is the top of stadlers

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?> 
  <!DOCTYPE spiderlist (View Source for full doctype...)> 
- <!--  $Id$ 
  -->

here is how it should be just like it is on the stock vbulletin file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<searchspiders>

[mikelbeck]

Ok, people, I've had some time to get back to this. Sorry it's taken so long....

I've got Beta 10 running here: http://www.heavymetalscene.com/spiders.php

Notice how much faster it is. I've pulled out the "rolling up" code and placed it in a file that's run once an hour via a cron job. So the data isn't 100% up to date, but it uses much (much) less queries than the previous version.

What else do you want to see in this release?

[DementedMindz]

how many queries are on that page? also will it auto update once a new spider is added?

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by DementedMindz

how many queries are on that page?

8! :classic:

No matter how much data is in the database, it's still 8 queries.

http://www.heavymetalscene.com/spiders.php (not a whole lot of spider data): Page generated in 0.19605 seconds with 8 queries
http://www.forumowners.com/spiders.php (quite a bit of spider data): Page generated in 0.51553 seconds with 8 queries
http://www.listedwrong.com/forums/spiders.php (very little spider data): Page generated in 0.14583 seconds with 8 queries

also will it auto update once a new spider is added?

When a new spider is added to the xml file you mean? I'll see if I can make it so it'll evaluate the spider xml file and update the "unknown" spiders if there's new data.

[DementedMindz]

yes that is what i ment sorry... yeah that would be great and glad to see you brought them down...

[Zia]

its nice mikelbeck to knowing abt the new version..

please give thought about not lost old spider visitng data after install new version..
Less query is really delicious things

[high]* Zia is waiting for the new release[/high]

[Stadler]

Can you please explain what you changed in my file?

btw: you shouldn't relay on the root-tag. Freddie implemented the xml-file before I've finished the DTD. However: online.php of vBulletin works with both root-tags, since it simply ignores it.

Regards,
Christian Stadler

[lsgworldl]

excellent

[4yBak]

why do you save all data without parsing in field PAGE?
Example:

faq, index, showthread, member, forumdisplay, calendar, memberlist, register, faq, showthread, showthread, showthread, showthread, showthread, index, showthread, showthread, showthread, showthread, showthread, index, member, showthread, login, member, sho

So, as you see, in this field has many repetitions like showthread, index, member, etc.

I think, in DB must be just one mention about each page.

PS: you can do that in this statistics was include information when spiders visited forums archived pages? Thanks.