My gopherhole


What kind of a pervert title is that?

No, really - “gopherhole” is a thing. And a cool thing at that.

Before the Web, there was Gopher. And they lived happily side-by-side for the better part of the 90s until the Web won out and Gopher went into seclusion.

Gopher was - and is - a text-based web of information. It is simpler than the Web, faster and free from bells, whistles and commercial distractions. It is a “pure content” experience loved by some hard core geeks.

To put it in context: In 2007 there were less than 100 gopher servers in the world. By 2012, there were 160. A slow growth since then has seen that number grow to 361. I guess mine bumps that to 362.

The Web is driven by the “http” and “https” protocols while Gopher is driven by the… “gopher” protocol.

Few browser supports the gopher protocol. You can use Firefox with the Overbite extension or a bunch of different gopher clients (there’s a good one for Android, “DiggieDog”).

Here is what my gopherhole looks like if you browse “gopher://isene.com” in the pure text browser “lynx”:

I will publish only the distilled simplicity of my research and notes in my gopherhole. Come join :-)

Thanks to Abraham Moller for the inspiration.


Link to this post: https://isene.org/2021/04/Gopher.html