Member Bots 1.01 - Bots are treated as registered members

Member Bots 1.01 - Bots are treated as registered members

Mod Version: 1.00, by trilljester

This modification is in the archives.

vB Version: 3.0.13	Rating: (0 vote - 0 average)	Installs: 5
Released: 22 Feb 2006	Last Update: 25 Feb 2006	Downloads: 39
Not Supported Code Changes

--------- Member Bots 1.01 ---------
Written by Trilljester - http://www.trilliummud.com

This is a port of my 3.5.x hack, Member Bots 1.0 as seen here:

Member Bots 1.0 - Allow bots to act as members

It has been tested on my test 3.0.x VBulletin install, and it worked exactly like the 3.5.x version.

This mod allows visiting search engines spiders or "bots" be treated as members instead of guests. You have full control over which usergroup the bots are placed in. This allows you to have content that can only be seen by registered users be indexed by search engines.

Important Note: A lot of debate has risen over this mod and so called
"cloaking" from search engines like Google. It is entirely up to you to utilize this mod, and I cannot take any responsibility if search engines remove you from their listings! I highly doubt that would happen, but I can't promise it won't.

I can say this though. VBulletin's biggest competitor, Invision Power Board, has the same functionality as this mod as a built-in feature, and lots of IPB installations use it WITHOUT any sort of banning or exclusion from major search engines like Google and Yahoo. I personally don't believe that this mod fits the exact definition of "cloaking", as you are not using the mod to improve
search engine ranking, just allowing content that you don't want public to be indexed.

If you charge members to access certain content, I would not allow search engine robots to index that content, as that could be viewed as cloaking. Just food for thought there. If you have any concerns or questions, feel free to PM me at my site.

Please don't fill this topic with baseless claims that if you install it, you'll be banned from search engines. On the flipside, don't fill this topic with debates on why it's not cloaking either. If you're absolutely paranoid about all of it, don't install this mod. Simple as that.

With that out of the way, let's get installing!

INSTALLATION:

1. Before you can do anything, you'll need to get a file from the 3.5.x VBulletin release, as 3.0.x provides no XML parsing, and 3.5 includes a great one that makes this hack work. I cannot provide the file in my distribution (well, I think I can't, to be safe I didn't.)

Download VBulletin 3.5, and upload the file includes/class_xml.php to your includes/ directory for your 3.0.x forum. You don't need to edit it at all, it'll work fine with 3.0.x.

2. Upload the rest of the files in the upload directory to your includes directory. (i.e. <forumroot>/includes/)

3. Load up includes/sessions.php into a text editor. Download it from your VB forum if necessary.

In sessions.php, find this:

Code:

if ($session['userid'] == 0)
{

ADD BELOW:

Code:

require_once('./includes/function_querybot.php');
$uagent = $session['useragent'];
$bot = query_bot($uagent);
if ($bot == 1) {
    $usrgroup = 2;          // Change to whatever usergroup you want! 2 = Members
} else {
    $usrgroup = 1;
}

A few lines below this, you'll see an array called $bbuserinfo.

On the line that reads:

Code:

'usergroupid' => 1,

Replace that with:

Code:

'usergroupid' => $usrgroup,

And that's it!
The spiders_vbulletin.xml file comes from http://www.ragnarokonline.de/spiderlist/ and was written by Christian Stadler. You can visit his site to obtain the latest copy of the XML file. Keep it updated to keep up with new search engine bots.

Feel free to PM me at my site, http://www.trilliummud.com if you use this hack. Stop in and say Howdy, it makes me smile. :-)

// trilljester

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