Robot-Manager Standard and Professional Editions

To check the current version of your software, choose Help|About from the main menu. If your version is later than the one posted here you will need to download and install the latest version from this web site.

February 3rd, 2004 - 3.1.32.133 Update

• UPDATE: Minor updates.

January 5th, 2004 - 3.1.30.132 Update

• FIX: Building the directory tree from some Earthlink servers was forcing the program into an infinite loop because of malformed ftp listing data.

December 9th, 2003 - 3.1.29.131 Update

• UPDATE: Added support for more Unix Servers.
• FIX/ADD: Fixed a problem with moving back a directory in an FTP browse dialog. Plus, added a new 'Back' button to move back a directory when FTP doesn't log you into your home (root) directory.

November 6th, 2003 - 3.1.28.129 Minor Update

• FIX: When logging into an FTP server using the Browse button, if the directory being logged into had only directories and no files, it was possible for the system to mis-report a data channel connection error.

November 6th, 2003 - 3.1.27.128 Minor Update

• UPDATE: Added support for more Unix and Windows FTP Servers. Specifically, support was added for various versions of BSD, Internet Component Suite, FileZilla, L9, WFTPD on WIN32, and many others.
• UPDATE: Support has been added for servers that use directory paths, email addresses, and domain names as Owner or Group names for file attributes.

November 4th, 2003 - 3.1.26.126 Minor Update

• FIX: When logging into an FTP server, some systems were allowing a directory change to 'root' which would lock the user out of any further directory browsing. This has been fixed by taking note of the user's home directory when first logging in.
• FIX: On some older Windows systems that had a buggy print driver installed, it was possible for Robot-Manager to crash when attempting to display a report. The printer driver is no longer used to render the report to screen. An appropriate screen device is now used, preventing Robot-Manager from crashing.
• NOTE: After installing this update, you may be asked to re-register your application. So please have your authorization code handy.

December 24th, 2002 - 3.1.24.121 Minor Update

• Added support for a variation of a unix ftp server.

December 17th, 2002 - 3.1.22.117 Minor Update

• Fixed a problem in Robot-Manager Professional that happened when the log file format could not be initially detected. It now correctly allows you to specify the log file format without repeatedly asking.

December 5th, 2002 - 3.1.22.115 Minor Update

• Improved support for linux ftp servers with user and group names that included a dash '-' character

December 4th, 2002 - 3.1.22.115 Update

• NEW! You can now rename your spiders so as to consolidate different spiders from the same search engine. For instance, Alta Vista has many versions of its Scooter spider that you can now rename to consolidate into one Scooter category.
• Improved support for auto detecting log file formats.

November 29th, 2002 - 3.1.22.110 Update

• Fixed a problem when running under Windows 98 when using ftp download on compressed files. The system would appear to "hang" while decompressing the first file.

November 27th, 2002 - 3.1.22.108 Upgrade

• This new upgrade is available to all users of Robot-Manager Standard and Professional. Special Editions distributed by magazines are excluded.
• NEW! Two new reports to display and print both spider visits and indexed pages.
• NEW! Editor to add known spiders that do not request the robots.txt file when visiting your web site.
• NEW! Whois dialog box for looking up spider host names and ip addresses to find out the owner. This gives you the ability to investigate unknown spiders that do not identify themselves in the UserAgent field.
• NEW! FTP browser for finding both directories and files on your web server. This is helpful when looking for your web site directory and your log files.
• NEW! Support for Mac ftp servers.
• Improved handling of both Windows and Unix style ftp servers. Permissions on Unix servers and now correctly handled as well as symbolic links to files or directories.
• Improved the log file parsing algorithm to handle more formats and is now more accurate when autodetecting log file formats. Furthermore, if Robot-Manager fails detecting your log file format, you are given the opportunity to set it manually.
• When Robot-Manager is unable to detect your ftp server type, you are now given the opportunity to send the required information to us so that we may add support for your ftp server.
• The last log file or files that were downloaded via ftp are now left on your computer in the program directory with the name "last_ftp.log". You can use this file to re-parse the file a second time to catch any spiders or pages that Robot-Manager missed on the first pass. Typically you may find a few pages.
• Plus many other smaller enhancements to improve the overall usability of the system with novice users.

July 9th, 2002 - 3.0.21.97 Update

• When processing multiple gzipped log files, the possibility existed that no spider information would be extracted. After installing this update, you may want to go back and reprocess some of your prior log files.
• The registration system has been updated to point to the new web server. If you are having trouble registering your software, download this update and install it.

June 19th, 2002 - 3.0.19.87 Update

• Fixed a display problem with the menu and toolbar where they would dock incorrectly.
• Processing log files is now 40 times faster! What used to take 40 minutes now only takes a minute.

April 6th, 2002 - 3.0.18.82 Update

• Added new functionality to the KNWON.DAT file in the program directory. This file is a list of known spiders that Robot-Manager can use to detect spider visits in your log file. This file now uses POSIX expressions for the IP address or Host name of the spider. See the KNOWN.DAT file for examples on how to use it.

April 3rd, 2002 - 3.0.17.80 Upate

• When extracting spider visits from log files, Robot-Manager can now work with resolved host names. Typically, Robot-Manager looked for spider IP addresses. Some log files had these IP addresses resolved. Robot-Manager can now work with both forms. For example: 216.35.116.88 or j3020.inktomi.com.

March 28th, 2003 - 3.0.16.76 Update

• Fixed a problem when using wildcards to download multiple log files from a directory. This was affecting both compressed and non-compressed log files. The function now correctly downloads all files and handles decompression.
• The syntax for IP addresses in the "known.dat" file has been updated to accept and asterisk in the last IP field (i.e., 192.168.1.*). This allows you to specify a whole class 'C' range for a spider. (Slurp is an example of a spider that uses a whole class 'C'.)

March 12th, 2002 - 3.0.15.73 Update

• Fixed a problem with parsing abbreviated dates from log files.
• Added the search engine spider from Mirago, a UK-based search engine.

January 22nd, 2002 - 3.0.14.72 Update

• Robot-Manager can now detect spiders who don't request the robots.txt file. Users can edit the file "known.dat" in the program directory to add spiders of this type. Some known ip addresses of Slurp/cat are included.
• Updated the sample project. Users on Windows XP who were experiencing a requet to insert a disk into drive D should no longer see this message.
• Minor speed improvements in the authorization code registration system.
• Improved the analysis speed on log files. In many cases, processing is now up to two (2) times faster!

January 14th, 2002 - 3.0.13.64 Update

• Fixed a problem with reading IIS hosted FTP sites using unix style directory listings. This problem showed up in Step 2 while reading the directory structure from the web server. The symptoms included partial or incomplete directory listings in the Folder List.