Without JS the button points to the RSS feed. This serves as a placeholder. The button was most likely copied and pasted.
Upon page load the website makes a call to the /rand.php endpoint, which returns a date in ISO8601 format. That is then used to produce the actual link.
Uhm, if the owner of the site is here, the “random” button presents you with an xml.
Not for me. Did you maybe find an easter egg?
Oh right, i have third-party scripts blocked by default on mobile. Now it works.
Still, uh, why was it made that way, that it needs JS to random-load a page?
Without JS the button points to the RSS feed. This serves as a placeholder. The button was most likely copied and pasted.
Upon page load the website makes a call to the
/rand.phpendpoint, which returns a date in ISO8601 format. That is then used to produce the actual link.<script> $.get("/rand.php",function(data){ $('.cc-navaux').attr('href','https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/' + data); }); </script>(lines 172ff. of the HTML source) Why? Ask the author.