GopherPress

WordPress plugin that serves your site over the Gopher protocol (RFC 1436)

by Derrick Tennant · github.com/emrikol/gopherpress · website

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Install

No release zip yet. The repository archive installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow:

wp plugin install https://github.com/emrikol/gopherpress/archive/refs/heads/main.zip

Readme

GopherPress

Serve your WordPress site over the Gopher protocol (RFC 1436). Because the web peaked in 1991.

   ____             _               ____
  / ___| ___  _ __ | |__   ___ _ __|  _ \ _ __ ___  ___ ___
 | |  _ / _ \| '_ \| '_ \ / _ \ '__| |_) | '__/ _ \/ __/ __|
 | |_| | (_) | |_) | | | |  __/ |  |  __/| | |  __/\__ \__ \
  \____|\___/| .__/|_| |_|\___|_|  |_|   |_|  \___||___/___/
             |_|

  Serving the web since 1991.

Overview

GopherPress runs a lightweight Gopher TCP daemon from inside WordPress, turning your posts, pages, and categories into a proper Gopher hole. It also exposes a REST endpoint so Gopher content is always reachable over HTTP — useful for managed hosts, curl, and the bundled local proxy.

Three ways to browse your site over Gopher:

Mode	How	Requires
Native daemon	Point any Gopher client at `gopher://yoursite.com:7070/`	`exec()` or `proc_open()` on the server
REST endpoint	`GET /wp-json/gopherpress/v1/serve?selector=`	Nothing — always available
Local proxy	Run `node gopher-proxy.js` locally, then use any Gopher client	Node.js on your machine

Requirements

WordPress 5.9+
PHP 8.0+
exec() or proc_open() for the live daemon (optional — see below)

Installation

Install from the WordPress plugin directory, or drop the plugin folder into wp-content/plugins/ and activate it. Then go to the GopherPress admin page, set your port (default: 7070), and click START.

If exec() and proc_open() are both disabled on your host (common on managed WordPress platforms), the daemon controls are hidden. Your content is still fully accessible via the REST endpoint and the local proxy.

Selectors

Selector	Content
(empty) or `/`	Root menu
`recent`	Last 10 posts
`categories`	Category list
`category/{slug}`	Posts in a category
`post/{id}`	Individual post (by ID or slug)
`tags`	Tag cloud menu
`tag/{slug}`	Posts with a tag
`authors`	Author list
`author/{slug}`	Posts by an author
`archives`	Archive menu
`archives/{year}`	Year menu
`archives/{year}/{month}`	Month post list
`about`	About page
`about-gopher`	Gopher protocol history document
`search\t{query}`	Full-text search (Type-7)
`gopher`	ASCII gopher art
`secret`	Alias for `about-gopher`

Post documents render with FIGlet ASCII art headings, inline images converted to aalib ASCII art, and [LINK: text → url] substitutions for hyperlinks.

Local proxy

The local proxy lets you browse your site with any legacy Gopher client without opening a public TCP port. It's a zero-dependency Node.js script that listens locally and forwards selectors to the GopherPress REST endpoint over HTTP.

Get the script

Download gopher-proxy.js from the Local Proxy section of the GopherPress admin page, or grab it directly from this repo at proxy/gopher-proxy.js.

Run it

node gopher-proxy.js --url=https://yoursite.com

By default it listens on localhost:7070. Use --port to change that:

node gopher-proxy.js --url=https://yoursite.com --port=7071

Browse

Point any Gopher client at gopher://localhost:7070. For example, with Lynx:

lynx gopher://localhost:7070

Options

Flag	Default	Description
`--url`	(required)	Base URL of your WordPress site
`--port`	`7070`	Local port to listen on

The proxy binds to 127.0.0.1 only — it is not reachable from other machines on your network.

Development

Prerequisites: Composer, PHP 8.0+

git clone https://github.com/emrikol/gopherpress.git
cd gopherpress
composer install
npm install

Scripts

composer test          # Run PHPUnit test suite
composer test:coverage # Run tests with coverage report
composer lint          # Run PHPCS (WordPress Coding Standards)
composer lint:fix      # Run PHPCBF auto-fixer
composer stan          # Run PHPStan static analysis
composer dist          # Build distributable zip → dist/gopherpress-{version}.zip
npm run lint:js        # Run ESLint

Project structure

gopherpress.php        # Plugin entry point, constants, hooks
inc/
  class-admin.php      # Admin page, AJAX handlers
  class-content.php    # Gopher content dispatcher (menus, posts, pages)
  class-daemon.php     # Daemon process management (start/stop/status)
  class-rest.php       # REST endpoint
  class-figlet.php     # FIGlet ASCII art renderer
  class-aalib.php      # AAlib ASCII art renderer (images → ASCII)
  gopher-server.php    # Gopher TCP server (spawned as a child process)
  polyfills.php        # WP function backports
assets/
  admin.css            # Retro terminal admin styles
  admin.js             # Admin page JS (AJAX controls, live log polling)
proxy/
  gopher-proxy.js      # Local Node.js proxy — bridges Gopher clients to the REST endpoint
tests/                 # PHPUnit test suite

Tests use PHPUnit 11 with WordPress stubs — no running WordPress instance required.

Contributing

This is a personal project. Issues and pull requests are not accepted. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later. See LICENSE.

Read the full README on GitHub →