Baton Rouge — The WCSL website has surpassed all other Internet websites Sunday by breaking the 100,000-visitor mark. No website has ever reached this goal during the entire decade-long existence of the World Wide Web.
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| Crowds celebrate somewhere cold upon hearing the record-breaking count. |
Sometime late Sunday night, the Worldwide Center for the Study of Leif website at theleif.org officially counted its 100,000th visitor, said WCSL webmaster Chaz. "For a website that's only been around for a little over three years, we are all surprised and very pleased."
WCSL's existence extends back to 1976 but the current domain has only been registered since March 2002. In that time, visits per month have gone from 47 to over 8000. For May, the number is up near 300 unique visitors per day. According to experts, no other website has ever reached that degree of success.
"Actually, we've known for quite a while now — I think since November — that the true number of visitors is about 3.5 percent more than what we are currently tracking," said Chaz. This would put the current visitor count at 104,293. The cause of the miscount is still being researched.
"The Founder was excited upon hearing news of the new record," said Founder Spokesman George Spielfisch. "Yes. Quite excited."
Given the pace of traffic increases to the site, it is not known if any other website will ever catch up. WCSL is expected to reach 1,000,000 by this time next year, many more than any Internet expert ever thought possible 10 years ago.