TIL my Geocities site had a broken hit counter for 6 months

Was digging through an old hard drive last week. Found my Angelfire site from 1998. The hit counter only showed 47 visitors. Thought nobody ever saw it. But then I checked the server logs from a backup. Turns out the counter script broke after the first week. Probably had like 400 people stop by. The guestbook was full of comments I never responded to. Feeling pretty stupid now. Anyone else ever find out their old site was more popular than they thought?

2 comments

2 Comments

derekp701mo ago

Wait, hold on, that’s actually a really good point I never considered. The same 47 people coming back over and over would be even more flattering honestly. In my experience with some old forums I ran, you had a small core group that just kept refreshing the page every day. They were your real fans, and they probably signed that guestbook multiple times hoping for a reply. Your mileage may vary, but I bet a lot of us had hit counter bugs and never knew it.

palmer.ryan1mo ago

Something that always gets overlooked is the hit counter itself mightve been accurate but you just had a huge number of return visitors. If you had 47 unique hits but 400 page loads, that means the same 47 people were coming back over and over. Way more flattering in a different way honestly.