> Pretty sure Linux didn't have inotify then.

Did FUSE exist yet? You could hack it up in userspace...

(Have the HTML on a FUSE filesystem, and every time it gets a read it updates the HTML)

Can confirm, that's how it was done. A simple text file.

What about dnotify? I think that predated inotify. If so, I think it has the ability to notify a process when a file was accessed, so could fill a similar role.