08 November 2025: TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE STEP BACK

Hello again.

I spent the best part of two hours this morning happily exploring gopherspace. Mostly reading people's phlogs, but also poking around what seems to be archived 
essays? I'm not sure. But I read the CyberPunk Manifesto written in 1997 and that was cool.

So far, I've learned how to save bookmarks in gopher. But I don't know how to share links yet.

I'm also not sure if I'm using pine correctly, but I have tried to say hello to a couple of people who have updated their phlogs recently, so we'll see if anyone 
replies.

I really want to make this phlog into something more interesting but I have no idea how to go about it. I've seen several people with titles made from plain text, 
and their "folders" seem to have descriptions, and spaces between them, that sort of thing. So I guess learning how to improve my formatting is on the list of 
things.

Also, I don't know why there's a link to the full list of sdf users on my directories. I don't know how it got there and I don't know how to remove it.

Please have mercy upon me, a noob.

And if you're feeling especially beneficent and know how to do these things/where to learn how to do these things, please feel free to email such 
information as is in your possession to lilac@sdf.org - I would be very grateful if you do.

I wish I didn't need my hand held, but, I humbly ask: is there an Absolute Beginner Idiot's Guide to all of this, somewhere?

"All of this" includes operating the terminal, by the way. I have checked "help" and "faq" many times over, but I've realised I need to find even more of a 
beginner's guide. A pre-beginner's guide, so to speak.

This entry brought to you by petulant frustration at the state of today's www search engines,

lilac
================================================
SEVERAL HOURS LATER

Okay. I should have had more faith in myself, because I managed to figure out a bunch of things (with much trial and error, it must be said).

It turns out that if you're using mkgopher, you can follow these steps to make a something called a "gophermap". This is what lets you organise your gopherspace 
manually. Without further ado, here is

HOW TO MAKE AND EDIT A GOPHERMAP USING MKGOPHER
===============================================
1. Open mkgopher

2. Type in: "edit gophermap"

3. This will launch the Pico editor (the same thing you use to write entries).

4. Edit the gophermap now. Plain text will stay as plain text, but don't use tabs to arrange plain text. I know that sounds confusing, see the linked guides below 
which will hopefully explain why this is.

5. You probably want to link directories (subfolders) and/or text entries. 
	Look here: 	https://www.davebucklin.com/play/2018/03/31/how-to-gopher.html
			https://github.com/gophernicus/gophernicus/blob/master/README.gophermap
   It is very important to get the formatting exactly right. From within mkgopher, 
	folder path should be: 	/users/[you]/[folder]/   		<---- the forward slash must be there or it won't work
	for text files:		/users/[you]/[folder]/[filename]	<---- no forward slash, no file extension (such as ".txt")

6. You can make a gophermap for every subdirectory, if you want to.

7. Remember, making a gophermap is voluntary. mkgopher will make its own basic one for you if you don't want to do it manually.

8. If you want to make a funky header, look no further than: gopher://gopher.floodgap.com:70/1/fun/figletgw

9. When you exit the Pico editor, make sure the filename is saved EXACTLY as "gophermap". Not as ".gophermap", not "/gophermap", just "gophermap".

For more information about gophermaps, there are several posts on bboard, under GOPHER, which I also found helpful. Unfortunately I don't know how to link directly 
to a bboard post, or in fact whether this is possible.

================================================
I should probably get some sleep.

lilac