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

[mikelbeck]

Author guy here...

I really haven't had the chance to think about doing anything with this, let alone actually doing anything. And I'm not sure when I will have. I've kind of gotten away from the vBulletin stuff lately, I've sold off all of my vBulletin sites and don't see me having any more in the near future. I just don't have the time anymore...

If somebody else wants to pick this up and run with it, go for it!

[Zia]

a bad news indeed mikel...

its an imp things..

umm any one out there?

[Snake]

Yeah is there anyone to take over this mod?

That's so sad, mikel.

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by Snake

Yeah is there anyone to take over this mod?

That's so sad, mikel.

Sorry... I got a new job that takes up most of my time, and I haven't had time to even back to the boards that I'm a "regular" on. So I unloaded all of my own sites and kept the ones that need no maintenance.

[Trana]

Ack, check this bad boy out:

Database error in vBulletin 3.6.4:

Invalid SQL:
INSERT INTO spider_watcher (nice_bot, bot, ip_address, page, type, info, timestamp) VALUES ('Unknown Spider','HouxouCrawler/Nutch-0.8.2-dev (houxou.com's nutch-based crawler which serves special interest on-line communities; http://www.houxou.com/crawler; crawler at houxou dot com)','3276309319','showthread','','', NOW());

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 's nutch-based crawler which serves special interest on-line communities; http://' at line 1 Error Number : 1064
Date         : Wednesday, January 3rd 2007 @ 08:04:43 PM

I think we need some field validation here.

[behcet]

hello friends,
i have a 500 mb database. my spider watcher table is enlarging day by day. and at this moment it is using 350 mb! why does it enlarge? is it normal situation? how can i stop it? or if i uninstall the spider may i meet any problems? what will you suggest me? tnkx alot...

[jw00dy]

I unistall mine periodically just for this same reason. Just uninstall, then re-import and it will start over. You will lose all previous data, so be warned.

[Smitty]

Has anyone tried this on 3.7.2?

[Jaxel]

Does this work on 3.7.2?

[4yBak]

work on 3.8.1 pl1 (but it was previously installed at vb3.5.x or vb3.6.x)