Please link to this page -- http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/ -- and not to the gateway script, so that people can benefit from the information below. If you're looking for Floodgap's web pages, they're on www.floodgap.com.

If you are, or you represent, an evil bot that likes to slurp down helpless addresses for the purpose of evil things like unrequested missives (note how carefully I'm avoiding the S-word or the U-word to defeat blunt grepping), please loop endlessly in this cage. Otherwise, welcome to the ...

Floodgap Public Gopher Proxy

Gopher is a well-known information access protocol that predates the World Wide Web, developed at the University of Minnesota during the early 1990s. What is Gopher? (Gopher-hosted, via the Public Proxy)

This proxy is for Gopher resources only -- using it to access websites won't work and is logged!

As the Gopher protocol enters its second decade of existence, its support among many major browsers has declined or has been expunged entirely (Microsoft Internet Explorer), if the browser even ever supported it at all (Opera and Safari never have).

To allow Gopherspace to continue to be usefully accessible in the coming years, since it's still definitely a viable and useful (not to mention lightweight and efficient) information distribution protocol, the Public Proxy offers a standards-based, effective Gopher<->HTTP gateway to facilitate access even when your web browser doesn't.


Who does need this proxy?: Support for Gopher does not exist in Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and later, Microsoft Edge (all versions), Google Chrome (all versions), Apple Safari (all versions), Mozilla versions 2.0 and later and all derivatives (including Firefox 57+ (install OverbiteWX), Firefox 4 through 56, TenFourFox 4+ and SeaMonkey 2.1+ (install OverbiteFF)), Opera (all versions), Vivaldi (all versions), Brave (all versions), iCab (all versions), or Netscape 5 (inclusive) to before v6.2.3. Support for Gopher is broken in Microsoft Internet Explorer 4, 5 and 6 (a registry hack is required to enable Gopher in IE 6); Mozilla versions before 1.8 and all derivatives (including Netscape 6.2.3-7.x, Firefox 0.x-1.0.x, Camino < 1.0 and any Chimera); NCSA Mosaic (all versions -- try Mosaic-CK); Konqueror (all versions); OmniWeb (prior to 5.9.2); Arachne (all versions). See this document (Gopher-hosted, via the Public Proxy). Submit your testing to ckaiser@floodgap.com.

Are you accessing this site with Firefox 57+? Download OverbiteWX to restore Gopher support in-browser!

Who doesn't need this proxy?: You do NOT need this proxy if you are using any version of Lynx, Firefox 1.5 through 3.6 (or TenFourFox with OverbiteFF or Firefox 57+ with OverbiteWX), any derivative of Mozilla 1.8 through 1.9.2 (including Camino, SeaMonkey 1.1 and 2.0.x, and Netscape 9, or any SeaMonkey with OverbiteFF), Classilla 9.0 or higher, OmniWeb 5.9.2 or higher, Netscape 4.8 or lower, the original webTV Internet Explorer, Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.x or lower, or HyperLink 2.5a or higher. See this document (Gopher-hosted). Submit your testing to ckaiser@floodgap.com.

If you use one of these browsers, please browse the Floodgap.com gopher directly. Note that some browsers are limited to port 70. This proxy allows access on other non-malicious port numbers, so you may still need this proxy for gopher servers hosted on unusual ports.

What does this proxy support? What does this proxy not support?: Supported features include most standard Gopher-internal types and representations, indexed search server support, caps properties, and both light and full proxy views. Currently unsupported features include Gopher+ and CSO. Also, this proxy does not allow HTTP requests and will remap them into 302 redirects. You should not consider this proxy to be anonymous, as it is not designed to be a complete filter, you may be directly connected to a remote host at any time, and server logs and aggregated statistics may be used to look at Gopherspace usage trends. Also, to reduce abuse of Floodgap's seriously overloaded uplink, the connection is rate limited and may be slowed if the server is busy. Run a local client if you can.

Your usage is governed by Floodgap Terms of Service. Don't use this service unless you agree to be bound by its regulations.

General Information on Gopher

Where can I find a specific Gopher client for my platform?: The Overbite Project develops plugins and standalone clients for many mobile and desktop operating systems and environments. There are also many clients available for legacy systems which additionally support niches such as Gopher+. Here is a selection of clients for multiple major platforms, including source where available, including Macintosh, various Unix and Unices, and Microsoft Windows (Gopher-hosted, via the Public Proxy).

Where do gopher wranglers hang out? Where can I find out how to put up my own server?: Usenet comp.infosystems.gopher occasionally has discussions relevant to gopherspace. Many Gopher wranglers and gophermasters (depending on your preference) also read a mailing list maintained at other.debian.org (subscription information, Gopher-hosted, via the Public Proxy).

What standards govern Gopher?: Gopher is based on RFC 1436; a related protocol set called Gopher+ proposes various extensions to it that is also supported by many specialized Gopher clients (not this one). Here is a collection of specifications (Gopher-hosted, via the Public Proxy).

Why do only some gopher sites display the path breadcrumb menu?: The Proxy supports "caps," short for capability lists, a file you can place on a gopher server to tell a client about what specific capabilities it has and how to understand its filesystem. Not every gopher server has this file installed; because many older gopher servers may use alien non-POSIX paths, the Proxy makes no assumptions without it. If you want to add this support to your server, simply copy Floodgap's caps.txt file, modify it to taste, and place it in your gopher root mount such that the selector caps.txt will fetch it. It may take up to a half hour for this to be noticed, as the Proxy intentionally caches failure to avoid hitting sites too hard.

Proxy Access

Connect to the Public Proxy here.

Starting Points (via Proxy)

Direct Gopher links (not via Proxy)


Cameron Kaiser