Posted on 12/01/2023 2:16:34 PM PST by Chickensoup
Tired of being on platforms and long for days when we all had web sites and pages.
Is there a way to have communication via personal websites. I miss being able to visit the many sites available when the web young and people were interesting.
I remember the rings. However is there a way to have a bit more functionality and be able to communicate via sites without cookie cutters platforms?
A while ago a man-on-the-street interviewed asked people if they thought bad weather would cause problems for the cloud. Some people actually believed that.
Post 40 has a good explanation
Also post 35
That sounds interesting. Old school.
“I don’t understand.”
Sorry, CS. I posted too early. Have read the posts and now I get it.”
“Post 40 has a good explanation”
Right. Thank you. I should read farther in to the thread before posting. (What a concept, right?)
You are sticking with TRADIT!
Domain names & other professional services, but you would not need them for a basic personal site.
Morning... Hope you don’t mind me pinging Pollard also. He is always interested in playing with these things and hadn’t caught up with him about this one yet. :)
Yes MayflowerMadam, it is old school but with a few convenient minimal modern advantages such as displaying images in the client on the site rather than needing to download the file to render them, the ability to stream music, and it has search engines for the Gemini space. Things we didn’t have back when that are convenient.
But basically it is like the self served “Rings” Chickensoup speaks of. But with the ability to be searched with an engine which was a problem back then, you had to get lucky enough to run across a link in one of the other rings, or find a directory full of similar links. And like ring sites, these sites are light and minimalistic.
The pages are simple with some text and links. The links go to another page on that server, to a page on another Gemini server, to a download, or forward out to the normal HTTP net and open your default HTTP browser to go there. So you can still link out to HTTP sites from the Gemini pages if you choose to.
The pages are all pretty much like this Gemini site page I am linking. Except folks can customize the fonts, text color, and background color as they like. The fancier ones have old school ASCII artwork. lol
I am using Linux and know the Lagrange browser works excellent on Linux, I have not installed or used it on windows yet. But it is a simple setup.exe install. So if you install it for windows64 from the below link, you may want to backup your system first, or at least go and set a fresh “restore point” in your “go back” tool. But the developer “Skyjake” has a BBS in Gemini and is there daily with friendly free support.
So if you want to share what OS version you are using I can personally ask him for sure if it has been tested on your OS and if there are any known issues before you install it if you like? He may not have played with Win 11 yet, I don’t know, but I can double check with him before you give it a shot. But he takes pride in how well built his Lagrange browser is and operates. So his work is trustworthy.
And it is indeed cool.
https://git.skyjake.fi/gemini/lagrange/releases
Note for Pollard and anyone else on linux, Lagrange can be found in the Ubuntu flavor repository as a flatpack, or the install directions are here on the Git page.
https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange
Hi Chickensoup, I do the Windows-specific list. ShadowAce does the Tech Ping List, which is why I included him on my first reply above (#44), and again here.
Grateful!
CompuServe!
Commodore 64s! (Upgrade from the Texas Instruments TI-99)
1200 Baud Modem! (Upgrade from the 300 baud)
5 1/4” Floppy Disks! (Upgrade from the cassette drive)
Ahh, the bad old days . . .
Will check it out
I still think Free Republic’s interface is one of the cleanest websites out there. Not a lot of bells and whistles, but it is clean, functional, and light. I know a lot of folks have requested a ‘like’ feature, but I think it would reduce the actual participation on this site, since people could just ‘upvote’ something rather than comment on it.
Once we got software that would download all the posts from a given 'forum', it became a lot easier. You'd do all your reading and posting offline then just connect to upload any comments, and new packets. Since I'm old and forgetful, I don't even remember the name of the programs I used to use.
Gopher sites were also the bomb at one time, but I liked the ease of BBSes
Jack Rickard........ a major source of truth
I agree which is why I would like more
Fr had a view counter at one point
Now that you mention it, I think I had that as well. My "online" setup was a 1200 baud modem and an Amiga 500. There was some sort of software you could buy that you could use to create games, and I downloaded a ton of those homemade games.
There was also a crude "email" system that allowed you to address messages to someone across the country, and the message would hop from BBS to BBS until it reached the recipient, so you didn't have to make a long distance call to a BBS out of state.
This was the mid to late 1980s so my memory is a bit fuzzy...
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