I have created a test script that simply
increments the counter by 1 and displays the vallue.

And it works fine

But when I place the same code in the index.php file,
the value of the increment is doubled!

At this point, i am convinced that this is being caused
by the ineffecieny of the index.php file itself.
I am under the assumption that the index.php file calls itself while loading causing a double increment.

If this is true (and I apologize if I am wrong), can someone
explain what purpose it servers to double the load time of a page by calling it 2X?

And how can I get around this problem?