ASCII Heatmap & World Map
At the end of April, I got the idea to build a stats page for the blog. Initially just an hourly distribution heatmap, but the requirements kept growing: daily bar charts, monthly trends, crawler sources, visitor loyalty...
ASCII world map. Used DB-IP's free city-level IP database (8 million rows), batch-parsed visitor IP coordinates through a single file scan, then overlaid density characters onto map.txt.

Visitor Counter GIF
Used Pillow to generate an 88×31 pixel LED seven-segment animated counter. 12-frame loop, scanline scrolling, glow effect, breathing light. Each homepage visit auto-updates the count and regenerates the image. Logic is isolated in scripts/counter.py.

Server Resource Monitoring
Added psutil for CPU, memory, disk, and uptime reading, with a ctypes fallback for systems without psutil.

Comprehensive SEO Optimization

HTML 4.01 Transitional DOCTYPE, <html lang="zh/en">

Per-page unique <title>, auto-generated <meta description> (extracted from first body paragraph), <meta keywords> (extracted from tags)

<link rel="canonical"> + <link rel="alternate" hreflang="..."> Chinese-English cross-linking

Open Graph + Twitter Card complete tags

Global <font size="6"> auto-wrapped with <h1>, <font size="5"> with <h2>

Breadcrumb navigation (Home > Blog > Article Title)

Sitemap rewrite: 14 → 47+ URLs, including changefreq / priority

security.txt + /.well-known/security.txt (RFC 9116)

IE 5.5 Compatibility Audit

In early May, I used AI to conduct a full-site compatibility audit, uncovering 30+ incompatibilities: rgba(), display:flex, box-sizing, overflow-x/y, placeholder, querySelector, etc. An audit document and blog post were produced. Core JS (guestbook, editor) already has IE 5.5 dual-path fallbacks.

Guestbook Improvements

Floor Number System: Each message has an absolute floor number #N, displayed in gray on the right

Reply Quoting: Clicking the reply button inserts @xxx[#N], build process auto-strips reference numbers

Banned Words: Defined in data/runtime/banned_words.json, auto-replaced with <em>*</em>

Changelog Escaping: HTML-escaped at build time, preventing <font> tag pollution

Article Comment System

Added comment sections to each blog post using a hybrid approach: CGI handles submission + build-time injection of existing comments. Supports threaded replies (unlimited nesting), emojis, IP toggle. Submission redirects with 302 back to the comment anchor, with background async build. Page-type (page-*) articles also have comment sections.

Email System Optimization

Background Async Sending: Previously, @reply emails were sent synchronously — users had to wait for the email to finish before seeing the page redirect. Now changed to an independent process for background sending (mailer.py).

Emoji Rendering in Emails: [em07] is converted to <img> tags pointing to GIFs on the server.

Email HTML Template Extraction: Email template separated into src/components/cgi/mailer-email.html, using {variable} placeholders.

Markdown Blog Support

All 50+ blog posts and standalone pages converted from HTML to Markdown. Created scripts/md2html.py converter — supports headings/bold/italic/code/tables/footnotes/quotes/images. Build process auto-detects .md extension and converts. Old HTML source files archived to src/archive-html/. MD and HTML can be mixed.

Web Server Optimization

HTTP/1.1 + keep-alive (single connection reuse)

ThreadingMixIn multi-threading (parallel requests, no queuing)

Static resource aggressive caching: Cache-Control: max-age=86400 + Expires: 2030

Startup parameters nolog and nocount

Route table refactored, /.well-known/ support added

Project Structure Cleanup

data/ layered: runtime/ (manually maintained), build/ (auto-generated), comments/, logs/

assets/images/backgrounds → assets/images/bg

All scripts migrated to scripts/, .cmd entry points unified

changelog.txt → data/logs/changelog.log

External resources localized (mirror-external.py), removed preconnect external links

counter.py, banned_words.py and other new scripts split out independently

Other

Stats page excludes specified IP (180.154.121.226)

404.html unified to HTML 4.01 standard

Editor path correction (pages/blog → blog)

All images max-width:100%;height:auto; to prevent overflow

Blog post count rose to 50+, sitemap coverage updated accordingly

RSS changed to extract title + subtitle from compiled dist pages

Guestbook Emoji System

Pixel Art GIF Emojis
Added 20 pixel art emojis to the guestbook. Click » Emoticons below the input field to expand the folding panel, select from the grid, or manually type [em01] through [em20]. Stored as codes, automatically converted to images on both web pages and emails.
The emoji panel doesn't load images by default (JS lazy generation), saving 20 initial HTTP requests.

Compact Form Layout
Guestbook form changed from scattered label+input to HTML table layout. Name/Email/Content/Display IP/Send button all in a 125px-wide cell. Emoji panel saves space through folding, 1px CSS border replaced the original 2px default border.

Email System Optimization

Background Async Sending
Previously, @reply emails were sent synchronously — users had to wait for the email to finish before seeing the page redirect. Now changed to an independent background process (mailer.py), passing content via stdin, subprocess.Popen returns immediately after launch.

Emoji Rendering in Emails
[em07] in email body is now converted to <img> tags pointing to GIFs on the server, so recipients can also see the emoji animations.

Log System Refactoring

Unified Categorization
Previously, logs from various modules were scattered across different locations. Now all consolidated under data/logs/:


data/logs/
├── access/          ← Server access logs (daily .log, old logs .gz compressed)
├── guestbook.log    ← Guestbook operations (@mentions, SMTP status)
├── editor.log       ← Editor operations (create/edit/delete, auth failures)
├── search.log       ← Search keywords + result counts
├── toolbox.log      ← Toolbox usage records
├── build.log        ← Build records (page builds, full site rebuilds)
└── error.log        ← Cross-module errors

Created a unified logger.py module that all CGI scripts use to write to their respective categorized logs.

Performance Optimization

External badge images added loading="lazy", not blocking first render

20 emoji GIFs also changed to loading="lazy", reducing first-screen requests by 20

Header added external domain preconnect hints

Sidebar comment area locked to 700px width, preventing long content from breaking layout

Other Small Improvements

Web server changed to whitelist routing, sensitive directories (data/, scripts/, src/) unified 403

Added <!DOCTYPE html> declaration site-wide, goodbye Quirks Mode

editor.py added operation auditing (who changed what article and when)

Build script incremental caching switched to MD5 content hash, component changes correctly trigger full site rebuild

Blog editor, search engine, and toolbox all connected to unified logging

README documentation updated with explanations of all new features

—— Written on May 2, 2026, Happy Labor Day!

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