enigma-bbs/docs/_docs/servers/contentservers/gopher.md

layout	title
page	Gopher Server

The Gopher Content Server

The Gopher content server provides access to publicly exposed message conferences and areas over Gopher (gopher://) as well as any other content you wish to serve in your Gopher Hole!

Configuration

Gopher configuration is found in contentServers.gopher in config.hjson.

Item	Required	Description
enabled	👍	Set to true to enable Gopher
staticRoot	👍	Sets the path serving as the static root path for all Gopher content. Defaults to enigma-bbs/gopher. See also Gophermap's below
port	👎	Override the default port of 8070
publicHostname	👍	Set the public hostname/domain that Gopher will serve to the outside world. Example: myfancybbs.com
publicPort	👍	Set the public port that Gopher will serve to the outside world.
exposedConfAreas	👎	An map of conference tags to an object containing include'd area tags, and exceptions via exclude'd area tags. Area tags may contain wildcards of '*' and '?'. Any area tags that match will be exposed to Gopher. See Example Configuration below.

Notes on publicHostname and publicPort: The Gopher protocol serves content that contains host/domain and port even when referencing it's own documents. Due to this, these members must be set to your publicly addressable Gopher server!

Gophermap's

Gophermap's are how to build menus for your Gopher Hole. Each map is a simple text file named gophermap (all lowercase, no extension) with DOS style CRLF endings.

Within any directory nested within your staticRoot may live a gophermap. A template may be found in the enigma-bbsmisc directory.

ENiGMA will pre-process gophermap files replacing in following variables:

• {publicHostname}: The public hostname from your config.
• {publicPort}: The public port from your config.

ℹ️ See Wikipedia for more information on the gophermap format.

ℹ️ See RFC 1436 for the original Gopher spec.

💡 Tools such as gfu may help you with gophermap's

Example Gophermap

An example gophermap living in enigma-bbs/gopher:

iWelcome to a Gopher server!        {publicHostname}    {publicPort}
1Public Message Area    /msgarea    {publicHostname}    {publicPort}
.

Example Configuration

Let's suppose you are serving Gopher for your BBS at myfancybbs.com. Your ENiGMA½ system is listening on the default Gopher port of 8070 but you're behind a firewall and want port 70 exposed to the public. Lastly, you want to expose some ArakNet areas:

contentServers: {
    gopher: {
        enabled: true
        publicHostname: myfancybbs.com
        publicPort: 70

        //  Expose some public message conferences/areas
        messageConferences: {
            araknet: { // ArakNet's conference tag
                // start with all areas exposed
                include: [ "*" ]

                // ...except the +op and Phenom private areas
                exclude: [ "ark_sysop", "ark_phenom" ]
            }
        }
    }
}