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.

[Ronseal]

Hi mfyvie, As you've already anticipated my 'global.php' file does indeed have the line

($hook = vBulletinHook::fetch_hook('global_start')) ? eval($hook) : false;

the same as yours, so it'll have to remain a mystery for the moment why is doesn't work. However I do run vBSEO 3.0.0 on my site so perhaps that has some involvement somewhere. I haven't explored all the options in vBSEO but if I find any potential conflict I'll let you know.... but for the meantime your manual edit to the 'onlineusers.php' appears to work fine.

Thanks again
Ron

[James Argo]

/\ /\ /\
Click installed!

Beautifull

[Milktruck]

For some reason it doesn't seem to be working me as far as Yahoo is concerned... maybe I've done something wrong.

Guests where the status has not yet been determined:
05:15 74.6.20.156 /showthread.php?t=26617 Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)
05:30 74.6.24.110 /showthread.php?t=25687 Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)
05:46 74.6.7.80 /showthread.php?t=26365&page=2 Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)
06:06 74.6.24.100 /showthread.php?t=26212&page=9 Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)
06:13 74.6.23.233 /forumdisplay.php?f=327 Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)
06:28 74.6.28.164 /showthread.php?t=26353 Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)

I've got a whole bunch more Yahoo entries in the list.. any idea why they are staying put in my guest list? This plugin seems to work for all of the others.

[piraterevival]

Added and installed, nice one

[Marco van Herwaarden]

*** 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. ***

[r5e]

I've just granted permission to another coder who has agreed to take over the code from Mark's mods (like this one) and keep them up to date and free to all, which should be good news for all of you who use his mods and allow his legacy to continue.

Robert Fyvie

[Sonyuserforum]

Originally Posted by r5e

I've just granted permission to another coder who has agreed to take over the code from Mark's mods (like this one) and keep them up to date and free to all, which should be good news for all of you who use his mods and allow his legacy to continue.

Robert Fyvie

Anything new here?

[r5e]

Nothing major to report that is new, but PHPKD has been a little slower than I expected to take it up. He made an announcement a while back saying that he had started work on this, but I can't find it now. Try contacting him directly if you want more info.

[Omranic]

Hello every body,

Sorry for any inconvenience delay.
This product has been scheduled to be released two weeks ago, but since there was some internal & external problems with PHP KingDom's teamwork we've forced to postponement the release date.
But now every thing is going well, thanks GOD.
We've finally finished working on this product & it will be released for all supported vBulletin versions by tomorrow Thursday 08-01-2009 06:00 PM GMT. Yes, tomorrow. It's the final date we think.
Thanks for your patience & sorry for that delay.

Sincerely Regards
PHP KingDom

[Omranic]

Originally Posted by PHPKD

Hello every body,

Sorry for any inconvenience delay.
This product has been scheduled to be released two weeks ago, but since there was some internal & external problems with PHP KingDom's teamwork we've forced to postponement the release date.
But now every thing is going well, thanks GOD.
We've finally finished working on this product & it will be released for all supported vBulletin versions by tomorrow Thursday 08-01-2009 06:00 PM GMT. Yes, tomorrow. It's the final date we think.
Thanks for your patience & sorry for that delay.

Sincerely Regards
PHP KingDom

Follow-up.
According to users spotlights around this product & user's feedback received, we've decided to include some more features such as separating spiders in the "who is online" without neglecting them, also an option to reset the "maximum online users" any time from admin control panel. There is also other new features that's currently in progress, we preferred not to release the product before implementing these new features.
As we said before, the base product has been completed already, but will be released after implementing these new features. We will update this thread with further details & with release time (which should be very very soon).
Thank you for your patience.