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

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by bashy

Hi m8

MySQL Variables
system_time_zone GMT

My time zone is GMT
Forum Timezone is GMT also

I dont suppose this helps you any now does it lol

Bashy

Not even a little bit!

I'm clueless as to why those dates are wrong, I'll have to look into it and will come up with a fix.

[bashy]

Didnt think it would help you with them all being GMT
Will wait for a fix, no rush as its still recording them regardless

Regards

Bashy

Originally Posted by mikelbeck

Not even a little bit!

I'm clueless as to why those dates are wrong, I'll have to look into it and will come up with a fix.

[mikelbeck]

Can run an SQL query? I'm interested to see the results of this:

SELECT now() , curdate() , curtime();

Can you run that and post the results? Also please post what the current time in your area is.

[Zia]

hello mikelbeck

need help....can u plz check the link

http://www.golpo.net/forum/spiders.php

There are some unknown-spiders & they faced ErrorDocs..we need to know in which location spider faced the error docs...

and we need to know more about spider list..mean updated spider list..
can u tell me where to submit the spiders details plz??

[nitro]

You would need to add unknown spiders to the xml file in an editor afaik

to stop spiders roaming unauthorised areas you would if I have it right want to place a robots.txt file in your webroot with details on what pages you dont want them to view. It can take sometime for the robots.txt file to get cached by the spiders.

[Zia]

Originally Posted by nitro

You would need to add unknown spiders to the xml file in an editor afaik

to stop spiders roaming unauthorised areas you would if I have it right want to place a robots.txt file in your webroot with details on what pages you dont want them to view. It can take sometime for the robots.txt file to get cached by the spiders.

Can u help me a bit? how could i stop robot to visit inside a thread.
just dont want spider face any error docs?

how could I do it??

[bashy]

hi mikelbeck

Just a little more on this time issue, i thought i'd mention that although the 20 Hours Ago for example is incorrect the 08:08 PM actually is correct, strange 'eh lol

Regards

Bashy

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by bashy

hi mikelbeck

Just a little more on this time issue, i thought i'd mention that although the 20 Hours Ago for example is incorrect the 08:08 PM actually is correct, strange 'eh lol

Regards

Bashy

Did you do this yet? https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....8&postcount=43

[DementedMindz]

mikelbeck i like your site i was wondering is there somewhere where we can get the Drinks Menu that you have on your site ?

[Devil Woman]

I was wondering if there is anyway you can prevent members from being able to see the spider page at all and prevent members from seeing that admin and mods are in the spider page on the who is online page

Thanks