spore dispersal

Disperse!

Context from my blog post about random site portals…

prioritize:

databases and archives

community hubs

net art

resources, tutorials, and syllabi

avoid:

tech giants

commerce and paywalls

productivity tools

websites about making websites

blogs, portfolios, and personal sites

Page number milestones

# of pages	Date
100	I forgot
200	May 19, 2024
300	Feb 03, 2025

Dead link checking

Visual Basic! in Excel!

Function CheckURL(url As String)
 
    Dim request As Object
    Dim rc As Variant
    Set request = CreateObject("WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5.1")
    On Error GoTo haveError
 
    With request
        .Open "HEAD", url, False
        .Send
        rc = .StatusText
    End With
    
    Set request = Nothing
    If rc = "OK" Then CheckURL = True Else CheckURL = False
    
    Exit Function
 
haveError:
    CheckURL = False
 
End Function

Source: this reddit comment

Link check log

Date	# dead	% dead

How it’s made

I started with this random redirect php script, but I eventually split it into two files so I could use the variable $size without executing the redirect.

sites.php

<?php
 
$addresses = [
	'https://example.com',
	'https://example2.com',
	'https://example3.com'
];
 
$size = count($addresses);
$randomIndex = rand(0, $size - 1);
$randomUrl = $addresses[$randomIndex];
 
?>

disperse.php

<?php
 
include 'sites.php';
header('Location: ' . $randomUrl, true, 303);
 
?>

Then, in index.php, I can display the project’s stats with the following code:

<?php 
 
include 'sites.php';
echo "Last updated: " .  
date("F d Y", filemtime("sites.php"));
 
?>
 
Site count: <?= $size ?>

Spore dispersal is currently hosted on InfinityFree. I don’t love it, but it gets the job done.

ribonotes

Explorer