Test
Posted Oct 12, 2026 · by James
The bottom bar now says Ready and has a green-on-black visitor counter. The HEAD fix is live too, and curl -I on the home page now returns 200 instead of 405. I checked the layout on desktop and phone widths, and all 25 tests pass. The live counter currently shows 000000, because my check used a bot-style curl that isn't counted. Your first real visit will make it 000001.
How hit counters work
A hit counter is a number the server bumps each time someone loads a page. The 90s versions counted every load, so refreshing 50 times added 50. Yours is the "unique" kind:
Who counts as one visitor: the server scrambles the visitor's IP address and browser together into a short code. It also mixes in a secret salt that only lives on the server.
Per page: each page (home, and each entry) keeps its own list of codes it has seen. If your code is already on that page's list, the number stays put. If not, it's added and the count goes up by one.
Home vs. entries: the home page has its own count, and so does every entry.
Privacy: there are no cookies, and no IP addresses are saved, only the scrambled codes. The salt means the codes can't be turned back into IPs.
Survives restarts: the lists are stored in files on the server, so the counts survive restarts and deploys.
