Ages ago I remember going to some sites with URL's as such:
gopher://rest of the url goes here
But I have not seen any sites like that for ages now. Now I only see http and ftp. What ever happened to gopher? Are there any big ones still around? And what exactly WAS gopher?
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I actually just found a small explanation of old gopher sites which was quite helpful. I am still interested, however, to hear more and hear if there are any still around.
[/edit]A system that pre-dates the World Wide Web for organizing and displaying files on Internet servers. A Gopher server presents its contents as a hierarchically structured list of files. With the ascendance of the Web, many gopher databases were converted to Web sites which can be more easily accessed via Web search engines.
Gopher was developed at the University of Minnesota and named after the school's mascot. Two systems, Veronica and Jughead, let you search global indices of resources stored in Gopher systems.