Forum Display Enhancements - Remove Spiders from Who's Online

*** Staff note: The author of this modification has passed away in a diving accident. We wish his family all strength in dealing with this traggic issue. ***

Remove Spiders from Who's Online

The problem

The majority of the the "guests" on your forum are probably spiders. While you might think that it is impressive to show so many guests using your forum, this does not reflect the true number of people online. The who's online page does offer visitors the chance to change the display based on members, guests, or spiders, however the totals (and the record number of users online at one time) do not exclude spiders.

This mod does not remove spiders from your forum, it simply stops them being counted in the totals.

Some search engine spiders such as Yahoo's Slurp can initiate hundreds of connections at the same time (from different IP addresses). Each one of these connections will be included in your totals as a "guest".



What does this modification do?

• Completely remove all known spiders (spiders found in your includes/xml/spiders_vbulletin.xml file) from the who's online display
• Updates the true guest totals displayed on the main forum page
• Resets your maximum users online record on installation
• Includes changes for vBadvanced's online users module
• Doesn't offer separate spider statistics or configuration, it just makes it appear like those spiders aren't on your forum (even though they are)
• Easy access through template conditionals and variables to display different behaviours based on whether the connection is from a spider or not.
  

Who should use this modification?

Anyone who wants to their forum to show the true number of users online in the statistics

I run a big system, will this slow my board down?

Absolutely not. It's been written with big boards in mind. Even if you use a very large spiders_vbulletin.xml file, this file will only be checked once for each new session created. After that, whether the session is used by a spider is recorded in the session table. For users running vBulletin 3.6.6 or later, it will actually increase the speed of the who's online page, since known spiders are no longer compared against the list of known spider user agents. No new database queries are added, as existing queries are used or modified instead.

Hasn't this been done before?

There are a couple, but I've taken a slightly different approach with this mod - my focus was on simplicity and performance. You might also want to check out some other mods here and here, to see if they suit your purposes better.



Installation instructions

• If using vBadvanced, see the instructions below for a manual edit of your onlineusers.php file
• Install the enclosed .xml file via AdminCP -> Plugins & Products -> Manage Products -> Add/Import Product. Remember to click overwrite if upgrading
• Wait a few minutes - existing sessions must have some activity before they are reclassifed as a genuine member or guest
• (optional) Edit your admincp quick statistics file (instructions below)
• (optional) Reset your maximum online statistics again (if you feel the need, but it is done automatically during installation)

Configuration instructions

Nothing to configure! Just see the note below about spiders_vbulletin.xml

How can I make this more effective?

Spiders are identified via the includes/xml/spiders_vbulletin.xml file. However, the version that ships with vBulletin is quite small, and will recognise only the most popular spiders. Anything else will still show up in your statistics as a guest, making it hard to tell real guests from spiders.

Therefore it is recommended to update your spiders_vbulletin.xml if using this mod. You can obtain a much better version of this file from Christian Stadler here. Please contribute new user agent strings directly to him and encourage him to keep providing new updates of this file.

Will using a big spiders_vbulletin.xml slow things down? Theoretically yes, but in practical terms now. Lookups are only one once for each session when it is created. If you are running a version earlier than vBulletin 3.6.6 it will mean that more work must be done on the who's online page, but nowhere else.

Which versions of vBulletin will this work on?

This mod is designed to work for 3.6.6 and above, but there is some additional code included to handle 3.6.0 - 3.6.5 as well.

Optional extras

If you are using vBAdvanced then you'll want to modify your online users module. The following change should work for but versions 2.x and 3.x. Go to your modules/onlineusers.php file and locate this line:

WHERE session.lastactivity > " . (TIMENOW - $vbulletin->options['cookietimeout']) . "

Directly under this line, insert the following line (on a line by itself):

" . ($killspiders ? " AND " . TABLE_PREFIX . "session.spider = -1 " : null) . "

Please don't forget to include the quotes exactly as they appear above.

If you'd like to also include the quick stats in your admincp with this modification open your admincp/index.php file and locate this line:

$guestsarry = $db->query_first("SELECT COUNT(host) AS sessions FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "session WHERE userid = 0 AND lastactivity > $datecut");

replace it with:

$guestsarry = $db->query_first("SELECT COUNT(host) AS sessions FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "session WHERE userid = 0 " . (($vbulletin->products['whosonline_kill_spiders'] AND $vbulletin->options['enablespiders']) ? ' AND spider = -1 ' : null) . "AND lastactivity > $datecut");

Would you like to reset your maximum online users statistic (the one on the front page or who's online page that tells you the most number of users ever online)? go to the AdminCP -> Maintenance -> Execute SQL Query and run the following query:

DELETE FROM datastore WHERE title = 'maxloggedin' LIMIT 1

There is an additional file, spider_test.php that can be used to test the operation of this mod, as well as giving you a handy overview of which guests have not been classified as spiders, but probably should be. You can then use the user agent strings to expand your spiders_vbulletin.xml file. You can run spider_test.php from any forum directory, just upload it and then type the path to the file into your browser.

Support

Will be provided to those who click install

Version history

1.0 (15.07.2007) Initial version

Disclaimer: No actual spiders where harmed during the development of this modification.

[ERuiz]

I installed this mod and made the corresponding changes to the onlineusers.php file, but when I access my homepage, it says there are some guests on the who's online module block but if I go to the forum who's online display, it says there are no guests. What could be wrong?

[mfyvie]

Originally Posted by ERuiz

I installed this mod and made the corresponding changes to the onlineusers.php file, but when I access my homepage, it says there are some guests on the who's online module block but if I go to the forum who's online display, it says there are no guests. What could be wrong?

Point 3 of the installation instructions - wait a few minutes

When you first install the mod you will get different values for the numbers of guests in your vbadvanced block, the who's online total, and the total listed on the main forum index. Once your cookie timeout has expired (15-30 minutes) these values should converge to be the same. The reason is that you may be seeing old sessions which (because they are not active) have not been reclassified to either spider or non-spider in the session table.

[ERuiz]

Originally Posted by mfyvie

Point 3 of the installation instructions - wait a few minutes

When you first install the mod you will get different values for the numbers of guests in your vbadvanced block, the who's online total, and the total listed on the main forum index. Once your cookie timeout has expired (15-30 minutes) these values should converge to be the same. The reason is that you may be seeing old sessions which (because they are not active) have not been reclassified to either spider or non-spider in the session table.

Thanks for the quick response. Ok, I will give it 1 hour, LOL. Thanks again...

[ERuiz]

I did the edit for the control panel option and I get an error... It says it can't find the session table.

I had to manually add vb3_ (my prefix) to the session.spider portion of the code you provided and this got rid of the error.

I am using 3.6.7 and VBA RC1

[mfyvie]

Originally Posted by ERuiz

I had to manually add vb3_ (my prefix) to the session.spider portion of the code you provided and this got rid of the error.

Thanks for pointing that out - I checked my example above and changed it slightly. I dropped off the "sessions." part which means it should work without a prefix. I also noticed a small problem with that example - the value to test for was 0, it should have been -1. You should change yours accordingly otherwise it will report your number of guests as 0.

[keyness]

There is something wrong in this mod mfyvie, I've installed it 30 minutes ago, but when I click to who's online, I just can see 5 members and 1 guest, but I am pretty sure, there are at least 10 active users for last 2 minutes. I'll wait several minutes too.

[efil]

Hi,
When i use vBadvanced onlineusers.php edit, I get this database error:

Database error in vBulletin 3.6.7:

Invalid SQL:

SELECT session.userid, username, usergroupid, (user.options & 512) AS invisible, IF(displaygroupid=0, user.usergroupid, displaygroupid) AS displaygroupid
FROM session AS session
LEFT JOIN user AS user USING (userid)
WHERE session.lastactivity > 1184558427
AND " . TABLE_PREFIX . "session.spider = 0

ORDER BY username ASC;

MySQL Error : You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'session.spider = 0

ORDER BY username ASC' at line 5
Error Number : 1064

[mfyvie]

Originally Posted by keyness

There is something wrong in this mod mfyvie, I've installed it 30 minutes ago, but when I click to who's online, I just can see 5 members and 1 guest, but I am pretty sure, there are at least 10 active users for last 2 minutes. I'll wait several minutes too.

How are you sure that there are 10 active users? The other 4 may be spiders, or they may be inactive. Which view was this? Check both the front page of your forum, and the who's online display - in the first 15-30 minutes these may report different numbers. If you still don't believe it, you can manually check the session table in the database (however, this also shows sessions that are inactive). In the column "spider" you'll see -1, 0 or 1. 1 means spider, -1 means non-spider and 0 means that it hasn't decided yet (happens on new installs for inactive sessions). I wouldn't be so quick to pronounce something wrong with the mod, it could simply be that you have less "real users" than you thought

Originally Posted by efil

Hi, When i use vBadvanced onlineusers.php edit, I get this database error:

I've altered the syntax of that example I posted slightly use double quotes instead of single quotes. If you just change the two single quotes into double quotes it should work (or recopy the line from my example in the mod text at the top). I've tested this on my own forum and it worked.

[Hornstar]

Thanks, I may consider installing this, as it might offer an improvement on performance.

[projectego]

Great idea. Thanks a bunch!

/me clicks install