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

[Zia]

Dear mikelbeck

Thankx..for this too kool hack...but when u r gonna relase final version...

and one more point....if guest access is disable in forum..then can spider crawl the forum?
If Not..Any way that can makes spider crwal the forum ????
It changes db...hope it wont create any probs in sql db..

ALso Looking For More Modified hack...

Thankx...waiting for final version ....



If Not...can u make that the spider can crawl forum..if guest access disable.

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by Zia

Dear mikelbeck

Thankx..for this too kool hack...but when u r gonna relase final version...

I've got one or two things I'd like to add/change on this. Once that's done, I'll leave it in beta for a little while to make sure there's no issues, and once that's done then I'll release the 1.0.0 version.

and one more point....if guest access is disable in forum..then can spider crawl the forum?

No, I'm pretty sure you need to allow guest access to your forums for the spiders to get in. The spiders don't log in with a vBulletin username, so they are guests.

If Not..Any way that can makes spider crwal the forum ????

Not that I'm aware of. Unless you enable the archive and allow guests to view that, I guess.

It changes db...hope it wont create any probs in sql db..

It doesn't.

ALso Looking For More Modified hack...

What else would you want to see in it?

If Not...can u make that the spider can crawl forum..if guest access disable.

That's got nothing to do with this hack, that has to do with how you configure your forum.

[bashy]

Hi

Is there anyway to make a Unkown spider know?
I have the upto date spider xml, so not sure why it would be like this?

Bashy

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by bashy

Hi

Is there anyway to make a Unkown spider know?
I have the upto date spider xml, so not sure why it would be like this?

Bashy

No, it's only able to decode those that are listed in the updated xml file. You could update your xml file, or ask the people who are maintaining it to add the spiders that you're seeing.

[bashy]

ok no worries thanks anyway, great hack

Bashy

Originally Posted by mikelbeck

No, it's only able to decode those that are listed in the updated xml file. You could update your xml file, or ask the people who are maintaining it to add the spiders that you're seeing.

[LBSources]

works well .. thanks!

/me clicks install.

[nitro]

Looks like its working ok in 3.5.0 patched

Any easy way to add the whats going on or more importantly the who's online to the page ?

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by nitro

Looks like its working ok in 3.5.0 patched

Any easy way to add the whats going on or more importantly the who's online to the page ?

Do you mean the box that's display at the bottom of forumhome?

I would think that you could just copy that block from the forumhome template and put it into the spiderwatcher_spiders template.

[bashy]

Hi

I am also interested in this, could you please tell me exactly the right code to copy from forumhome and to exactly where to put it please?

Regards

Bashy

Originally Posted by mikelbeck

Do you mean the box that's display at the bottom of forumhome?

I would think that you could just copy that block from the forumhome template and put it into the spiderwatcher_spiders template.

[nitro]

Originally Posted by mikelbeck

Do you mean the box that's display at the bottom of forumhome?

I would think that you could just copy that block from the forumhome template and put it into the spiderwatcher_spiders template.

That would just display the block and images with no info. Guess I will have to try an find the php code in vb files and take pot luck on adding it to the spiders.php