Important: Don’t use Crawl Rate Tracker & Wordpress 2.5

{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }

Matthew 04 Apr 2008 at 9:59 am

I am currently running crawl rate tracker on gadgetvenue Patrick. Feel free to test my site with the tool that hobo-web used. I tested and do not see anything like hobo-web reported.

The only problem I had with crawl rate tracker was while migrating my site to a new server. The data wouldnt copy over, so I just had to flush the tracker tables out and start fresh. That is not related at all to this problem mentioned.

Hobo 04 Apr 2008 at 11:43 am

Hi Patrick

If you want access to my site to look at anything, or want me to turn the plugin back on for a while so you can see what’s wrong, let me know.

Shaun

Patrick Altoft 04 Apr 2008 at 11:44 am
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Thanks, I suspect it’s a database issue but better safe than sorry.

Until I know what the issue is I can’t figure out how to fix it.

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Matthew 04 Apr 2008 at 12:25 pm

I will do some testing here quickly to see if I can spot any problems that might have caused this. A quick search on google shows a few others who have seen this happen…

http://www.google.com/search?q=wp_sbtracking&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a

Patrick Altoft 04 Apr 2008 at 12:45 pm
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Have they changed the DB structure or something?

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Matthew 04 Apr 2008 at 12:50 pm

Hobo, it would be interesting to see if the problem still happens once the plugin is switched back on. When your site was upgraded, did you deactivate and then reactivate all the plugins? I normally skip that step, but used the auto upgrade tool this time which does that automatically. Maybe the deactivation and reactivation will fix the problem.

Matthew 04 Apr 2008 at 12:57 pm

I don’t think the db structure has been changed by any users, but there were a few updates to the database done by wordpress which I think was related to indexing and how data is accessed. Although CRT uses different tables, I wonder if this database upgrade somehow messed up the tables.

I mentioned in a reply to Hobo just now about deactivating all plugins. I’ve never done that before, but this time I did. Hopefully it’s just a matter of deactivating and reactivating the plugin.

Hobo 04 Apr 2008 at 1:03 pm

I did this last night – switching it on and off before publishing my findings. When I switch it back on, Google has issues. My guy isnt available yet to check the Database etc

Matthew 04 Apr 2008 at 2:03 pm

I wonder what’s different on the 3 blogs I upgraded where it still works successfully.

Patrick, If you cannot work it out then feel free to drop me an email and I can do some testing on a site where you do spot the problem. I would need access to cPanel so I can take a quick peek at the database and some of the code though, so it might not be possible for me to help unless it can be replicated on to one of my domains or if someone trusts me enough to hand over their details

Collin LaHay 04 Apr 2008 at 11:07 pm

Looked like it was working fine for me, but I’m not gonna risk it, so I will disable it for now. Thanks for the heads up.

Ken Savage 07 Apr 2008 at 3:48 am

Still problems with search-bot-tracker plugin and WP2.5?

I’m not seeing anything visibly wrong with my stats or blog, Patrick just so you know.

Patrick Altoft 07 Apr 2008 at 8:53 am
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Thanks Ken, it works for most people but I still can’t figure out what the problem is.

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oeroek 17 Apr 2008 at 3:18 pm

I just found out I have the same problem on my Dutch blog, http://www.saunaenthermen.nl .

I have made a new blog in WP 2.5 so it never had any other version (no upgrade issue).

My stats did not show anything so I was worried already why the Google bot did not visit. Later on I realized I was already indexed.

The worst part is that obviously, the error only occurs if the google bot shows up. So this basically is reverse cloacking. You give normal visitors your page and you present the google bot with some error.

I deactivated the plugin and hope that Googlebot will visit me quickly.

I will keep track of this post to see if the problem will be fixed in the future.

Colin 24 Apr 2008 at 1:08 pm

This exceptional gentleman has found out how to fix it!

http://bloke.org/php/crawl-rate-tracker-and-wordpress-25-manual-fix/

miller 30 Apr 2008 at 7:01 pm

http://codex.wordpress.org/Migrating_Plugins_and_Themes_to_2.5

“Another change that might affect some plugins is that in WordPress 2.5, the Activation hooks for plugins are run in non-global scope within a function (they used to be run in the global scope). This means that if your plugin has an activation hook, and the function it calls relies on global variables that are defined within your plugin file, you may find that they are not working properly. All you need to do is, at the global scope level in your plugin, add a “global” declaration for those variables, and you should be OK.”

I have added in file search-bot-tracking.php a string

global $wpdb, $sbtracking_table, $sbtracking_db_version, $sbtracking_plugin_file;

and after that activation working OK

antiquarian books 11 Dec 2008 at 2:14 pm

Thank you for this information.

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