Some notes to myself on sdf and steps required to manage this space.
Maybe they will be helpful to you, but probably not.

I always loved gopher in an irrational way. I remember browsing
early gopher in the 90's as a kid, using it a bit for school
assignments, but mostly just screwing around aimlessly. But it was
fun in the way a lot of the Old Internet was fun--just regular
people putting their weird out on the net for the world (or nobody)
to see. Every few years gopher pops back into my memory, and I trip
down the rabbit hole of "Is it still a thing" and "What kind of
crazy person is still on gopher--those must be my people, how do
I find them". Well, now I know.  I'm still figuring out how I want
to set up this site, but I love the simplicity of a simple hierarchy
and plain text.

The `mkgopher` command apparently doesn't create files or directories
with the right permissions to be served by Gophernicus, so just
create them manually. The wiki is your friend:

https://wiki.sdf.org/doku.php?id=gopher_site_setup_and_hosting_features