Back to the index! Visit Our Gopher! Gopher Menu drawing

Step in our time machine back to 1991! For those who like things simple and orderly or have old computers around, try our Gopher server at gopher.somnolescent.net.

What's Gopher?

Gopher is a very, very old way of grabbing stuff off the internet. Imagine every web page was a neat, orderly list of images and sounds and text files, and that's Gopher! It's zippy, it's tidy, and it's peaceful, with no ads or autoplaying videos to bother you while you're looking.

Neat! How do I get on Gopher?

If you're just curious and you have a modern web browser, try a proxy! It lets you look at Gopher right in your browser, like any other web page. There's a few online now; Somnolescent has our own called Gopherlens, which is hosted over on Replit.

If you've got an older browser, like Netscape, Internet Explorer 5, or RetroZilla, you can click to gopher://gopher.somnolescent.net/ and browse directly in your browser without a proxy!

What will I find there that isn't on your sites?

Our Gopher is all about projects! There's a version of w2krepo optimized for older computers, you can find Pennyverse stories and character references on there, exclusive music, and it's the only place to download copies of Pituophis and Gophew, which is our custom Gopher server with search capabilities.

Gopher carrying his files along!

Where do I go to learn more about this Gopher thing for myself?

mari's Gopher Repository! It's got everything, client/server software reviews, protocol documentation, how it works, how to customize menus, and even where to set up your own Gopherhole. It's fun!