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  "path": "/now-on-gopher/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-02-22T04:54:08.771Z",
  "site": "https://evertpot.com",
  "tags": [
    "Gopher",
    "inetd",
    "published it on this blog",
    "Gemini",
    "Wikipedia",
    "https://github.com/evert/hole/",
    "Lagrange",
    "“The Internet Gopher from Minnesota”"
  ],
  "textContent": "When I just got on the internet and spent a lot of time tinkering with Windows 98 internet settings, just to get and stay online I first learned about something called Gopher via this settings screen:\n\nWindows 98 proxy setting screen\n\nI always had a bit of an obession with obscure protocols, so I was always a bit curious about this. At the time all major browsers supported Gopher and occasionally would run into an elusive `gopher://` link, perfectly integrated with the rest of the web.\n\nIn 2006 I learned about inetd on linux and it occured to me that I could build a gopher server with PHP without needing to learn about sockets (which seemed hard). So I made a little server and published it on this blog. Most Linuxes don’t ship inetd by default anymore, but at the time it was a great way to build simple TCP services without knowing anything about TCP. Just reading and writing to `STDIN` and `STDOUT` was all you needed to do.\n\nI never really kept that gopher site going, mainly because in order to host it, you need an IP address (no vhosts!) and a running server, and I didn’t really want to pay for that.\n\nThen a few years later all major browsers dropped support for it (and Chrome never had support).\n\nFast forward to 2026, and I think gopher is in a bit of a resurgence. The protocol is very limited, and as a result it’s inherently a place without tracking, ads, comment boxes, corporate interests, AI, misinformation and short-form video. Now that the excitement and idealism of the internet in mid 00’s is dead and buried, Gopher (and Gemini) offers a little respite.\n\nThe biggest year for Gopher in this century was actually 2025, when the number of active gopher sites reached a whopping **432** according to Wikipedia, and even new clients are being made. Most of these sites are just personal spaces, like the homepages of yore.\n\nI also recently built a little homelab, so this seemed like the perfect time to finally set up a permament gopher server (or ‘hole’).\n\nIf this sounds interesting, go take a look:\n\n  * My Gopher site: gopher://hole.din.gy.\n  * The source on GH: https://github.com/evert/hole/ (feel free to fork and dig your own hole!)\n\n\n\nTo access gopher sites, the easiest is probably to use `lynx`, found in a package manager near you, or you can use the shiny Lagrange client.\n\nIf you’re interested in the history of Gopher, Abort Retry Fail has a great article titled “The Internet Gopher from Minnesota”.",
  "title": "Now available on Gopher!",
  "updatedAt": "2026-02-21T16:09:07.000Z"
}