redterminal.org Gopher Hole

-------------------------------------------------------------------
+title:  The Smolnet - What I really like about it
+date:   Thu, 17 Apr 2025 03:25:59 +0200
+author: -fab- <fab@redterminal.org>
-------------------------------------------------------------------
                  ___________.__
                  \__    ___/|  |__   ____
                    |    |   |  |  \_/ __ \
                    |    |   |   Y  \  ___/
                    |____|   |___|  /\___  >
                                  \/     \/
         _________              .__                 __
        /   _____/ _____   ____ |  |   ____   _____/  |_
        \_____  \ /     \ /  _ \|  |  /    \_/ __ \   __\
        /        \  Y Y  (  <_> )  |_|   |  \  ___/|  |
       /_______  /__|_|  /\____/|____/___|  /\___  >__|
               \/      \/                 \/     \/

<== What I really like about the Smolnet ==>

Time for another meta post about the Smolnet and what I really like
about it.  It's not  only the  privacy and  the advertisement-free,
distraction-free experience. And  it's not simply to  have a Gemini
Capsule, a Gopher  Hole, or a finger server, and  to be independent
from  the big  web oligarchs  that divide  the web  into their  own
silos, which spy  on us all the time for  some nefarious reason and
squeeze out  every little bit  of information from their  users for
marketing, advertising purposes, or other malicious things.


<== The Do-It-Yourself Attitude ==>

These things are  really good to have and a  good reason to partake
in  the Smolnet,  but  what  I really  like  is the  Do-It-Yourself
attitude of its users. They  build their own tools and tool-chains,
servers, browsers, scripts and utilities - and share them!

There  are  Gemini/Gopher  directories,  post  aggregators,  search
engines, news scrapers, tinylogs,  query engines for multiple sites
like Wikipedia and  other news sites and a lot  more. We have forum
sites like BBS  and station and I don't know  how many browsers and
servers for Gemini and Gopher.

All  these   things  are  developed   for  the  community   by  the
community, including the tools for the Gemini Capsules/Gopher Holes
themselves.  This encompasses  also  the little  programs to  build
article  indexes and  post  feeds for  aggregators,  or to  collect
content in your browser.  Innovations like bacardi55's tinylogs and
Gemini-Mentions  are also  part  of this  effort.  All these  great
things are made for fun and to enjoy our creativity.

I for example  still use nytpu's gemlog.sh bash  script[1] to build
my Gemlog index and feed and have it heavily customized to my needs
and used it as  a template for my phlog script  which does the same
for my  Gopher phlog and creates  a gophermap and a  feed file. But
there are  others like  gempost[2], which  some people  prefer, and
also  other  tools[3]. I  also  developed  two bash  scripts  which
prepare my posts  to the end resulting Gemini or  Gopher file (with
all the marks)  and then run the build scripts  and upload the diff
to my Gopher / Gemini / Finger / WWW server.

[1]: https://git.sr.ht/~nytpu/gemlog.sh
[2]: https://github.com/justlark/gempost
[3]: https://github.com/kr1sp1n/awesome-gemini


<== The Joy of Simplicity ==>

Exactly  because Gopher  and Gemini  (and Finger)  are such  simple
protocols,  it's relatively  easy for  newcomers  too to  set up  a
Gopher Hole or a Gemini Capsule and to cobble together a toolchain.
There's nothing more exciting than getting your own script running.
Okay - it's easier if you already have some IT experience, but even
if you get stuck, there are  always people in the community who are
ready to help.


<== So I built my own Smolnet universe! ==>

All these reasons brought me to  build my own server, which runs on
FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE  for now.  It supports Gemini,  Gopher, Finger
and the WWW, whereas  my web presence is only a  proxy to my Gemini
content.  And  recently I  added  a  Gopher-To-Web proxy[4],  which
provides my Gopher content on  the web[5], and which I'm developing
myself in Go.

[4]: https://codeberg.org/fab/go-gopherproxy
[5]: https://redterminal.org/gopher/

Doing all  this and building up  my own server with  all it tooling
feels very rewarding and gives me a  feeling of success, if I add a
new feature, build a new script  or something else. And all of this
is "Do-It-Yourself"!

So  build up  a Gopher/Gemini  server  yourself! It  brings lot  of
pleasure!


All in all - Have fun!
-fab-