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 ozzy47

Yes, I know Simon, I thought about doing it that way also, but the payoff, is not worth the trouble. It would bloat the mod, and become a resource hog in no time.

Thats what i'm saying, if all they want to do with their forums is watch bots/spiders (and thats not what the mod is about) then they'll have hours and hours of fun but no members as the forum would slow down to a snails pace.

People, just rest assured that the mod is doing it's job and giving you back valuable resources please dont waste them again by trying to build in fancyful functionality thats really a whim and not a must have

[ozzy47]

Exactly, which is why I only made it a count of total blocked, it's quick to write, and quick to read and display the count.

I used the analogy, KISS, keep it simple stupid.

[Simon Lloyd]

Originally Posted by ozzy47

Exactly, which is why I only made it a count of total blocked, it's quick to write, and quick to read and display the count.

I used the analogy, KISS, keep it simple stupid.

who you calling stupid????? Lol!

[ozzy47]

I call myself stupid all the time, when I am writing code.

[Simon Lloyd]

Originally Posted by ozzy47

I call myself stupid all the time, when I am writing code.

Haha!, i hear ya!

[Black Snow]

Originally Posted by ozzy47

Say what? This is already recording the blocked bots. In four different possible ways, in a log file, in a thread, in a email and the bots blocked count.

Now writing each bot individually to the DB, is not a good idea, as the table would grow too big, and be a giant PITA when you query it to get the info. Think about it, in just five days, only blocking baidu, I have a count of 9062.

Now lets take that and round it to 10,000 for seven days. Lets say I am going to block the 281 bots I have in my list. 281 x 10,000 x 52 = 146,120,000 entries a year.

Sure each bot is not going to hit me 10,000 times a week, but you can see, this can really grow fast.

And my site is not that busy, now imaginge on a busy site, the entries to the table in the DB could be 250,000,000 plus a year. Now run a query to retrieve the info from that table, and it would hurt the site every time it is ran.

IMO, the best way to go is how it is now, just increase the count every time a bot is blocked, and get that number and display it.

I understand where you are coming from but that is not my intention completely. I will log, for example, Baidu into the database and each time it is blocked, the count will go up by one. I just want to be able to query the DB to see a list of all blocked bots and how many times it was blocked. The log, output.txt, is messy IMHO and I want to be able to query the bots list.

[ozzy47]

I can see that, but as described, that is still going to be something that is totally un necessary, and still slow things down, on a busy site.

But it is cool in theory, I started to do just that, but decided against it as I was going along, and found the best thing was to have a running count total. People don't care how many times not X was blocked, just as long as it was blocked.

[too_cool_3]

I have one question regarding Ban Spiders by User Agent. Since many of the User Agent's in the lists contain words like 'bot', 'spider' and 'crawl', will enabling the option Ban Spiders in List ban even good spiders from the forum???

e.g.
Google Spider (crawl-66-249-75-154.googlebot.com)
BingBot Spider (msnbot-157-55-39-186.search.msn.com)

[ozzy47]

It will only ban spiders you have listed, not all spiders.

[Simon Lloyd]

Originally Posted by too_cool_3

I have one question regarding Ban Spiders by User Agent. Since many of the User Agent's in the lists contain words like 'bot', 'spider' and 'crawl', will enabling the option Ban Spiders in List ban even good spiders from the forum???

e.g.
Google Spider (crawl-66-249-75-154.googlebot.com)
BingBot Spider (msnbot-157-55-39-186.search.msn.com)

I've explained this many many times throughout all the Ban Spiders By UserAgent threads, take a look here for the latest explanation https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=652