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

[DementedMindz]

You would have to add more names of the bots in the spiders_vbulletin.xml file.
PHP Code:

 <spider ident="METATAG INFO">   
<name>SpiderName of Your Desire</name>   
</spider>

[mikelbeck]

Lizard King: On what page do you get that message? And what do you mean, "the log is too big"? There is no log, it's a table in the database.

Devil Woman: Have a look at this page: http://www.4webhelp.net/tutorials/misc/htaccess.php

[Lizard King]

Originally Posted by mikelbeck

Lizard King: On what page do you get that message? And what do you mean, "the log is too big"? There is no log, it's a table in the database.

Devil Woman: Have a look at this page: http://www.4webhelp.net/tutorials/misc/htaccess.php

When i tried to view spiders.php the first day it worked but after first day it never worked. ıt might be because i have a lot of spider activity lately. Checked the attached log because of this i always get timeout errors.

[NexDog]

This is great - installs. I want admins only to be able to see this so what conditional would I need for forumhome...if condition="$bbuserinfo['user.....?

[armagan]

Originally Posted by Lizard King

When i tried to view spiders.php the first day it worked but after first day it never worked. ıt might be because i have a lot of spider activity lately. Checked the attached log because of this i always get timeout errors.

!!!!

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by NexDog

This is great - installs. I want admins only to be able to see this so what conditional would I need for forumhome...if condition="$bbuserinfo['user.....?

Yeah, something like this:

<if condition="$permissions['adminpermissions']">
<a href="$vboptions[homeurl]/spiders.php">Spider Activity</a>
</if>

[Zia]

Originally Posted by samu2

Google and slurp have been on and seems to have gotten stuck lol

I uploaded buttons and saw them three days after everyone else could.Had to put up a redirect last night,works ok for everyone else,bar me.

ahha...same here...Tahoo !Slurp just sticky my place...even 3/4 at a time..
Google very frequently...

just wondering too many spider can slow down forum ??

[NexDog]

Originally Posted by mikelbeck

Yeah, something like this:

<if condition="$permissions['adminpermissions']">
<a href="$vboptions[homeurl]/spiders.php">Spider Activity</a>
</if>

I did it with a usergroup ID:

<if condition="is_member_of($bbuserinfo, 6)">

6 being the ID of the admin usergroup. Can you think of any drawbacks to doing it that way?

The hack is so cool though. Since I installed just a few hours ago it's logged over 900 hits from google and 400 from slurp.

[Club3G]

Installed, but getting the following error in 3.5.3:

Database error in vBulletin 3.5.3:

Invalid SQL:
START TRANSACTION;

MySQL Error  : You have an error in your SQL syntax near 'START TRANSACTION' at line 1
Error Number : 1064
Date         : Thursday, January 12th 2006 @ 01:18:47 PM
Script       : http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/spiders.php
Referrer     : 
IP Address   : xxx
Username     : Chris
Classname    : vb_database

[mikelbeck]

NexDog: I'm able to view your spiders page as a guest, so I'm going to assume that your code isn't working properly.

Club3G: What database & version are you using?