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

[Snake]

Also it's asking me for the varname while I was adding the task in the acp.

[mikelbeck]

Yep, the varname thing is new for 3.6, I'll have to update the docs for the next version.

As for when the next version will be out, I can't say. I haven't had a chance to do anything with it, and I won't be able to get to doing anything until next week at the earliest.

[Hornstar]

I just tried to do a backup of my database through SSH and got this error for the first time

mysqldump: Got error: 1016: Can't open file: 'vb3_spider_watcher.MYI' (errno: 145) when using LOCK TABLES

any idea why?

[jw00dy]

I have no idea, but you could maybe try disabling the plug-in, then backing it up.

Or maybe it just happened to be running the cron when it tried to backup that table?

Just some ideas to try.

[mac27]

I installed this great hack. I have also updated my spider list. I had a spider crawl my forum and in the spider.php page it named it unknown spider. Anyone have an idea. It is the gigabot spider.

The gigabot spider is listed in my spider listing also.

[4yBak]

I'm still waiting fix for this bug - https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=396

[Zia]

Originally Posted by mikelbeck

Yep, the varname thing is new for 3.6, I'll have to update the docs for the next version.

As for when the next version will be out, I can't say. I haven't had a chance to do anything with it, and I won't be able to get to doing anything until next week at the earliest.

hi mike...
when the next version going to release? also for 3.6.1?

[Snake]

Any updates? We have been waiting for weeks now.

[rezapci]

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

where in navbar? with what code?

how I add the cron job?

your Instructions is not clear...!

[Snake]

What he meant is to use the following code to your navbar template, which is optional.

<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="spiders.php$session[sessionurl_q]">Spiders</a></td>