Miscellaneous Hacks - Ban Spiders by User Agent

What this mod does
With this mod you can enter User Agents to watch or ban, you can also recieve emails or have an Output.txt created and updated with time and date of visits. It doesn't just have to be spiders, you can watch, log or ban any useragent!

How to install
Simply import the product ban_spider, the mod is active by default but none of the other options are turned on.

What is a UserAgent?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent

Understanding a UserAgent string
http://user-agent-string.info/parse

Genuine User Getting Blocked?
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=105

Tools to help
http://whatsmyuseragent.com/SwitchingUserAgents.asp
http://www.botsvsbrowsers.com/SimulateUserAgent.asp

FAQ
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=137

How does it work?
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=381

What's a bot?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spambot

How do i ban a bot?
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=318
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....7&postcount=51

Where's output.txt located?
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=216

Bad bot lists
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=259
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=224
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=281

Tested on vb3.7.x, vB3.8.x , vB4.x.x but should work on any version.

__________________________________________________ __________________
Special thanks to:
Lior
KH99
BoP5
for helping me sort out a few issues

...and beta testers
ForceHSS (Special thanks to Force for latest testing)
ozzy47
GreyHost

If you use this please mark as INSTALLED

History
9th June 2011 Orginal xml added
12th June 2011 Added both email notification and text file logging
22nd June 2011 Version 2.0.0, Added create thread on activity

1. Added match facility you can now use something like Yandex and it will match MOZILLA/5.0 (COMPATIBLE; YANDEXBOT/3.0; +HTTP://YANDEX.COM/BOTS)
2. Added clickable link to visited thread

22nd September 2011 added user redirect url selection
08th October Beta testing started for thread creation.
20th October Beta testing started for emailing.
21st October Beta testing complete Ver 3.0.0 uploaded
29th October minor fix added to cope with empty userid on thread creation
30th October Beta testing automatic redirection to spiders/bots IP
31st October New xml uploaded with automatic redirect to IP
25th November Minor fix for blank forumid fixed
26th November 2011 Fixed version check & create thread Off by default
17th December 2014 Version 3.1.0 uploaded, Hook changed extra logging and statistics added by Ozzy47 (Chris)
18th December 2014 Version 3.1.1 uploaded, prevented spiders being counted when mod turned off.
17th December 2014 Version 3.1.2 uploaded, due to rogue code from another mod
The Bad Bots list is now included in the product
Please prune out all those that you wish to be able to see your site (i suggest you definately prune out "DA" and "Custo" :

Support will now only be given to those who have this mod marked as INSTALLED

[Simon Lloyd]

Originally Posted by CAG CheechDogg

The Baidu spider can take up to a couple if not few months to completely disappear and actually obey the no crawl rule when adding this mod or even blocking it through your robots.txt ... I have it blocked everywhere and it took maybe 3 days before I didn't see it again ... the best thing to do for me was also add a huge IP block to my htaccess file that completely blocks all of China and a couple other Asian countries from accessing my site ...

Believe it or not you can actually go to their site and ask them not to crawl your site

[tanzeelniazi]

Originally Posted by Simon Lloyd

That appears correct.

you say i am correct but i see also these spiders in whois online why ? also i see i link showing like this
showthread?=1' ???
i mean 1 spider see this link showthread?=1' ???

[Simon Lloyd]

Where are you seeing that? make sure that your list of bad bots has no leading or trailing spaces on each name. If you are still having trouble you can pm me temporary admin login details with rights to administer plugins and i'll take a look

[Max Taxable]

Originally Posted by CAG CheechDogg

The Baidu spider can take up to a couple if not few months to completely disappear and actually obey the no crawl rule when adding this mod or even blocking it through your robots.txt ... I have it blocked everywhere and it took maybe 3 days before I didn't see it again ... the best thing to do for me was also add a huge IP block to my htaccess file that completely blocks all of China and a couple other Asian countries from accessing my site ...

It's not a no crawl rule, it is a outright block, with this mod. There's no obeying or disobeying. It's not robots.txt. When you install this mod and with baidu on the list, it should be blocked. Gone.

I believe for the incidents of it still appearing in v4s after this mod is installed, must have something to do with interference from some other mod. Else, how to explain my v4 getting NO appearances by baidu after I installed this?

[Max Taxable]

I'll add to the above - I suspect a hook conflict actually. One that only happens when some other mod calls the same hook, and it's not all the time because from what we saw at OzzModz, Baidu was greatly reduced in appearances by this mod, just not totally gone. Occasionally one or two of them slip through during the time of the hook conflict.

It doesn't happen in v3 at all, for the same reason I believe.

[Gadget_Guy]

Anything in particular I can look for in terms of a hook that might conflict?

Would a list of my mods help?

D.

[Max Taxable]

In v3 and v4 this mod calls "style_fetch."

[CAG CheechDogg]

Well I haven't had Baidu appear on my site in over 2 years ... way before I even installed this mod which has helped me a lot regardless of how it does it lol ... my point is that "I" haven't had Baidu for a very long time ...

[Max Taxable]

Well sure if you block China and other countries via .htaccess you probably won't see Baidu.

I used to have a massive .htaccess with country blocks.

[Simon Lloyd]

banning by .htaccess is fine if you only have a few things in it because it is read with every single server request, so if you have 10 blocks in your .htaccess and lets say you have a web page with 30 elements (icons, css, containers, includes.....etc) then each one of those that tries to access that page has 30 checks made just to load that page.

Now consider your own landing page and check how many things load to make that page up and you'll soon see why having a lot of bans in your .htaccess can be detrimental particularly if you are on shared hosting or limited vps.

@Gadget_Guy & Max Taxable
The hook is style_fetch, you can try changing the hook for one of the others that loads before all the others but you may not see the result your looking for, doesn't hurt to try