Dumb website only lets one user in at a time

Not at all the same thing I admit, but the company I work for has a product that limits the number of transactions (per user) to 1. Where "transaction" is roughly equivalent to an HTTP request. So if you run a query that takes 30 seconds, get bored, open up a new tab to do something else in the product, your new tab will hang until the transaction in the previous tab has completed.

I hate it.

There is a special URL that will kill your running transaction. All of the engineers know it and have it bookmarked, but it's undocumented.

You can see the page from the source code:

<article id="content" class="inside"> <h1> Congratulations </h1>

  <h2>
    Only you can see this website.
  </h2>
  
  <p id="suckers"></p><br/>

  <img class="trophy glow" src="https://cdn.glitch.global/1543e9b8-e528-46e7-9375-25300add0f54/trophy.gif?v=1646925832589" alt="clip art animated gleaming first place trophy"/>

<br/>

  <p>
    Don't leave or you'll lose your spot.
  </p><br/>

  <a id="tweet" href="#" target="_blank">
    <img class="icon twitter" src="img/twitter.svg" alt="Twitter icon" />
  </a>

</article>

Upon visiting the website:

  failed to start application on imherefor.me
  This is most likely because your project has a code error.
  Check your project logs, fix the error and try again

Maybe it got hugged to death?

Take away the position counter, and this would perfectly simulate trying to use a single-line BBS.

Spoiler for anyone interested https://imgur.com/U4XxbDZ

I once worked for a Cambridge startup called Sayagle where you would Yagle for SayaCash (don't ask).

I started after the website was built by a cheap offshore team. It was built with JSF and we soon found that no one thought about multithreading because they only ever tested it with a single user.

Needless to say, when more than 10 users were active on the site, they would start to experience problems, like seeing eachothers data and stuff. "We" fixed the problem by adding more servers while I tried to rewrite the whole thing using spring and jsp.

I know this is meant to be a joke, but there are official sites in Ireland that really does use queues like this.

I'm tempted to create a version of this that launches a crypto miner while users are waiting.

The queue here seems to work poorly. Looked at the site and I was 162. Looked away and back for literally 2 seconds, I was 164. alt tab and back again, I was 176. Again and I was 188/188. Now I'm 140. What?

I pulled this up out of fun curiosity, and then found it harder than expected to close the site because “what if I lose my place?”. And so that’s basically how marketing works in a nutshell.

The human psyche is weird.

There's a whole business for bad performing websites that need to limit visitors! https://queue-it.com/

Is this page down？I only got failed to start application on imherefor.me

  This is most likely because your project has a code error.
  Check your project logs, fix the error and try again.

"This is brilliant! The way all websites should be"

- Sincerely, the Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons and Penguin Random House

1. this is an AWESOME art idea 2. even more awesome is the single comment to hoffm's first post about this site a few months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30700024) and I hope HN keeps it that way

Little toys like this are the spirit of the web, it must be included here: https://sharkle.com

Anyone actually get into the size and see what's there?

I've thought about doing this sort of thing, maybe a max number of visitors per day, for a blog, as an anti-going-viral measure

Oh, bummer. I got down to flipping between position #2 and position #3, then the poll request returned 503 and I lost my spot.

Glad folks are enjoying this silly project! If you want to know more, I wrote something about it back when I made it:

https://hoffm.medium.com/hey-look-at-us-3a742993f5c

About 15 years ago, I knew an online store that was closed on Sundays.

I got stuck at number 8 for a long time and gave up.

What a funny idea!

Should definitely add a chat function so people can yell at the guy taking forever

Reminds of the old Gbbs days :-)

So it's.. a book?

Ok guys can you move? Someone is there for too long.

50 points and over 40 comments on Hacker News. I wouldn't call that dumb.

You're dumb.