# Generating a Gopher site with Hugo

# Generating a Gopher site with Hugo

March 14, 2019 · 4 minute read

Posted in: hugo gopher retrocomputing

This blog is produced with [hugo][1], a static site generator, and the
articles are written in [Markdown][2], a plain text markup format. Since the
articles are fundamentally plain text, for some time I've been wanting to
make them available over [gopher][3], a simple protocol that was created
around the same time as the first versions of the World Wide Web. I used
gopher before I used the WWW in Lynx and Mosaic, and even after the web was
dominant, I used [GNOFN][4]'s free dial-up gopher as my access point to the
internet. Gopher is currently undergoing a renaissance, partly driven by
disgust with the current state of the WWW, and there is a thriving community
of [phloggers][5], people writing blogs and serving them over gopher.

## Hugo configuration

### config.toml (site config file)

I created a custom output format by adding this to my config.toml:

```
[outputs]
home = ["HTML", "gopher", "RSS"]
section = ["HTML", "gopher", "RSS"]
taxonomy = ["HTML", "gopher", "RSS"]
taxonomyTerm = ["HTML", "gopher", "RSS"]
page = ["HTML", "gopher"]

[outputFormats.gopher]
mediaType = "text/plain"
baseName = "gophermap"
isPlainText = true
protocol = "gopher://"
noUgly = false
```

This says to keep generating HTML and RSS in the same places as the default
configuration, but also generate gopher maps and plain text files for
everything. The one caveat here: the gophermap for the home directory is
going to be named 'gophermap.txt' rather than 'gophermap', and the gopher
server will have to be configured accordingly.

## Templates

I needed to make three templates in order to get the gopher output format to
actually generate anything: one for the one page, one for list pages, and
one for articles. If you copy and paste these, you will probably need to
manually re-insert the tabs in the gophermap lines, because they will have
gotten mangled by Markdown->HTML->browser.

### layouts/index.gopher.txt

```
!{{ .Title }}

{{ .RawContent }}

Site sections:
{{ range .Site.Menus.main }}
1{{ .Name }} {{ .Identifier }} {{ $.Site.Params.hostname }} 70
{{ end }}

Most recent articles
{{ range first 3 .Pages.ByPublishDate.Reverse }}
0{{ .Title }} {{ with .OutputFormats.Get "gopher" -}}{{ .RelPermalink }} {{ $.Site.Params.hostname }} 70 {{ end }}
{{ end }}

```

### layouts/_default/list.gopher.txt

```
!{{ .Title }}

{{ .RawContent }}

{{ range .Pages.ByPublishDate.Reverse }}
0{{ .Title }} {{ with .OutputFormats.Get "gopher" -}}{{ .RelPermalink }} {{ $.Site.Params.hostname}} 70 {{ end }}
{{ end }}

```

### layouts/_default/single.gopher.txt

```
# {{ .Title }}

{{ .Date.Format (.Site.Params.dateform | default "January 2006") }} · {{ .ReadingTime }} minute read
{{ if .Params.tags }}
Posted in: {{ range .Params.tags }}{{ . }} {{ end }}
{{ end }}

{{ .RawContent }}

```

### Running hugo

I have to run hugo a separate time to generate my phlog, because it has to
run with a different option from my blog. It needs the `uglyURLs` option
set, while my blog needs it unset. That could be set in `config.toml`, but I
use it on the command line.

## Setting up the gopher server

I chose to use [gophernicus][6] as my gopher server, because it was easy to
set up with systemd and seems to be popular. The only tweak to the default
configuration was that it has to be started with `-d gophermap.txt`, so it
knows to look for the gophermap in the file by that name (with the .txt
extension).

## Changing the way I write Markdown

In writing my blog, I've been used to soft-wrapping lines in my Markdown
files. That is, each paragraph is a single line of text, and my editor
(emacs) displays the long lines as paragraphs. This is nice for
version-control purposes, as changes within a paragraph only change one line
and don't introduce irrelevant formatting changes. But gopher clients often
don't line-wrap, or don't do it well, so it's better for me to hard line
wrap my source files at less than 80 characters.

I've also gotten used to the [title]\(link) style of links. I need to get
back into the habit of footnote-style links, because they look better when
reading the Markdown source as text.

## Conclusion

So, my [blog][7] is now also available as a [phlog][8]! A lot of the
existing stuff isn't formatted that greatly on gopher, and I may or may not
put in the effort to clean that up. But I was impressed with how little work
it really took to make this gopher site.

[1]: https://gohugo.io/
[2]: https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29
[4]: http://www.gnofn.org/
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlog
[6]: https://github.com/kimholviala/gophernicus
[7]: https://jfm.carcosa.net/
[8]: gopher://jfm.carcosa.net:70/