DARE.CO.UK · DAILY EDITORIAL · 2026-05-10
The week, in a manner of speaking
Saturday's traffic arrived at 14,820 requests — the site's first full day of measurement after launch, which is either data or a baseline depending on your faith in next Saturday. Cache hit rate popped to 43.3% (from 0.0%, but then again, there was no 0.0% to compare against), and 2,183 threats landed in the blocked bin — mostly the predictable WordPress-detector bots hammering /wp-login.php and /wp-admin/index.php with the enthusiasm of creatures that haven't read the about page. The contact page took 90 requests, which suggests either genuine human interest or a very well-orchestrated bot with feelings. Most of the site's architecture just shipped — fields-notes went through Variant B, then C, then back, three times in one afternoon because iteration is a thing that happens when you're trying to choose between monochrome and colour — and none of it visibly broke. The Methods and Culture archives both went live with image-bearing featured strips. 404s ran at 41% of the 90-day mix; most of those are favicon.ico and the aforementioned WordPress detectives, which is fine. A quiet launch weekend, in other words, doing exactly what it was meant to do.