The best way to view gopher sites is to use older software. Except for terminal software (read command line interface) that is available on nearly every computer platform (Unix terminal, Macintosh terminal, Z-Term, Nifty Telnet or Windows/DOS - Putty, Terminal), you will need to access gopher servers with older gopher client or web browser software.

Frankly other than terminal programs, I don't know what kind of gopher clients are available for the PC and the Windows operating system. On the Mac however, if you have an older Mac sitting around, you can access gopher sites with the following software:

It is quite possible that older versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape for Windows will work on the PC.

A Gopher site will look like the screenshot that I took using Blue Skies and my old Powercenter 150 Mac clone running OS8. Neat huh?

If you are lucky enough to have an older computer that can access gopher sites, then for sure click or copy & paste the following link to see Mel's Internet Universe Gopher Site:

If you have a newer computer running a newer browser that does not natively support the gopher protocol, all is not lost. There is a website that will allow you to visit gopher sites through their proxy access. That website belongs to Floodgap.com's Public Gopher Proxy.

Access the following URL to access the world of gopher and to get more information about gopher. All you need is the web browser that you are now using... Internet Explorer, Netscape (people still use this?) or Safari if you are on Mac OSX.

Here is the Floodgap Gopher Proxy URL:

From there click the following link to visit Mel's Internet Universe Gopher Site:

Once you get there, you will find an assortment of text files including some early message board archives from the Hawaii Radio & Television Guide and a handful of personal chart lists. More stuff will be added in the future.

If you want to create your own Gopher site, you can join SDF Public Access Unix. Membership information is available at the following link:

Creating a gopher site is not very hard... just a matter of placing the correct files and directories in your gopher space through the use of the SDF terminal program (Unix).

There are a lot of computer geeks at SDF and many have created their own gopher sites even though most of them are just experimental and lot of them are probably never seen.

Need more information? Check out the following links below.