HCMC Live
The public face of the server, live at hcmc.fun. What the game is, how the death loop works, how to get in from Java or Bedrock, and a player count read from the server itself.
The job the page has to do
A Minecraft server listing gets about four seconds.
In that time the page has to answer three things, before any of them are asked. What makes this one different. Whether it runs on the device the reader owns. And how to get in.
So the headline states the rule the whole server is built on. The paragraph under it explains the death loop in four sentences. The address is one click to copy. Everything else sits below that.
The architecture decision
A module inside the game watches append-only tables and pushes them outward. The website reads a database, and never speaks to the game server at all.
The obvious other way is to ask the live server every time somebody loads a page. That is a denial of service you have written yourself, and it arrives on the day the server is busiest and most worth showing off.
Why it exists
I have a lot of built projects and very little a stranger can click. This is the piece that makes the largest of them visible, with no account, no install and no invitation.