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All the tips and tricks from fedi.flounder.online

How to create a sub-folder for your flounder geminispace

If you have more than a few geminis on your flounder site then consider creating sub-folders to combine similar geminis in one spot:

1. go to https://flounder.online/my_site

2. log in if not already

3. look at the tip-text in the input box - it gives a good clue as to how to create a folder

4. type something like: gemlog/first-blog.gmi into the input box

5. click edit

6. either compose your gemini there or paste in a previously prepared one

7. save file

8. the folder: gemlog will now have been created if it was not already there, along with your new gemini file

9. if you don't save the new folder(and file) will not be created

Put an index.gmi file inside each folder

If you have created additional folders for your flounder account consider adding an index.gmi file to them. The convention is for browsers to serve a file called index.gmi if just a folder is requested. If that file does not exist and someone navigates to that folder without specifying the full URL of the gemini they will get the following error

(e.g. AV-98 error): ERROR: Not found

Here is an example folder that does not have an index.gmi folder

gemini://fedi.flounder.online/errors

It does exist however as navigating to a gemini within it will testify:

gemini://fedi.flounder.online/errors/error-testing.gmi

Your index.gmi file should probably list all geminis in that folder and optionally include links to other folders you have or geminis within them. It is up to you.

Create subscribable geminis!

When you post a new gemini here on flounder.online or elsewhere how do people know without browsing to your site?

There do of course exist technologies which long ago solved this problem. RSS and Atom are two such protocols and are well worth looking into especially for more prolific bloggers.

But there is also a very simple convention which has been proposed over at gemini.circumlunar.space which allows anyone to simply edit their own geminis by hand and so long as a few simple rules are followed then any browsers which have the ability will pick up the new post if they have subscribed to the URL.

The original proposal can be read here:

//gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/companion/subscription.gmi

Example index.gmi file

# Fedi's Gemlog    <-- notice this should be descriptive of the feed 

Welcome to my Gemlog, where I blog about gemini. 

## Blog posts

	**notice that the following 3 links are followed by a date in the format YYYY-MM-DD; this is the key item to note to make your gemlog subscribable under this format.***

=> third-blog.gmi	2020-12-10 - av98 is a nice gemini client 
=> second-blog.gmi	2020-12-03 - flounder.online lets you create geminis
=> first-blog.gmi	2020-12-01 - Gemini uwu!

## Other gemlogs I enjoy

	**notice that the following 3 links are NOT followed by a date and so will not be picked up by the feed.***

=> gemini://someone-elses-url buying a second-hand car
=> gemini://someone-elses-url qutebrowser is great!	
=> gemini://someone-elses-url what is a pikkulog?

End of Example index.gmi file

How to make it work on flounder

Follow through the previous two posts I made about creating a gemlog folder and adding an index.gmi file. (Alternatively your account should have a default index.gmi file in the top directory). Now edit your index.gmi file to include the date of the blog posts in the format YYYY-MM-DD as above. Any hyperlink lines with that date format directly after the link will be picked up by compatible feed readers and others won't.

Shortcomings

As the original proposal points out there are shortcomings with this convention mainly to do with no time of day or timezone being communicated, but for simple personal blogs it is perfectly ok.

Also some people like the fact that geminispace is much more 'human' and a large part of its charm is that you can browse around it without knowing what you will find so feel free to not implement this feature.