Creating a Blog in Gemini://
23 points by FedericoSchonborn
23 points by FedericoSchonborn
A few notes:
Now, a blog in a Gemini capsule is usually called a gemlog, and although there's no official gemlog spec, the community has settled on some norms:
https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/companion/subscription.gmi is a "companion specification", but it is "somewhat official"! (And some clients will use implicit feeds; you can subscribe to gemtext implicit feeds in Lagrange, for example.)
I also find it one of the most powerful ideas in Gemini. Whereas providing a feed in HTML is tough and likely requires programming, providing a Gemini feed can be done with much less knowledge in gemtext!
The preformatted link blocks at the bottom could be regular links? You can link to Gemini URLs, such as my blog in HTML and if you have things set up correctly, it will work.
I've said it a million times, but it seems useful for me. Gemini is performative art. You don't even have to use Gemini to learn from it! I encourage people to study it even if they think they'll never use it, because it will change how you do things (for the better).
I finally discovered someone who made their blog and SSG gemtext-first, but they don't even run a Gemini server.
I made my site gemtext first too, although I run a Gemini server for it mostly for kicks. I described my tricks to run a dual HTTP/HTML + Gemini/gemtext site, I think they're quite interesting.
You don't even have to use Gemini to learn from it! I encourage people to study it even if they think they'll never use it, because it will change how you do things (for the better).
That’s so true. For 10 years, I tried to replace Wordpress by another blogging platform. But I always lacked that small feature. I opened a gemlog for the fun and then I realized that I didn’t need anything more. (the realization came because I started to write a lot on my gemlog, forgetting my blog)
At that point, I migrated 20 years of blogging into a gemlog. Ploum.net is now gemlog first and I never never regretted this decision when I see how it improved my blogging and how it was well received.
I call this "the last blog I will ever need".
https://ploum.net/2022-12-04-fin-du-blog-et-derniere-version.html
Heh, always love the chance to practice my rusty French.
We're quite aligned. (Heh, I'm lately looking for better text linting too.) I also have all my posts on the index for ctrl+f instead of server-side searching. I discarded my Wordpress tags, and just did series by linking entries together. I'm "jealous" you figured out mailing lists as a distribution mechanism- that's on my todo list.
Now I'd like to make it easier for others to do this. Maybe something without Git, but perhaps slightly command-line oriented. (Or just something that wraps and hides Git somehow.)
(One thing I'd like to find a Gemini-like replacement for is ActivityPub. I was thinking of an implicit gemfeed, but without links; that is:
* 2026-09-21 Had an interesting chat with ploum on Lobsters
* 2026-09-20 Did the dishes
... but maybe I just need to follow on my thoughts that microblogging is evil and to be avoided, no matter what technology you use for it.)
Gemini has no cookies, so persistent state across visits is handled with TLS client certificates. A server can respond with status 60 ("certificate required") for a path, and the client either generates one (with the user's permission) or presents one it already has. The server then keys any stored state to that certificate's fingerprint. This is how a capsule "remembers you" between sessions without passwords or cookies.
This seems like a really cool idea. I've tried to use mTLS for accessing homelab services without a VPN and the UX of client certificates is... not great. Maybe with passkeys becoming more common, that same machinery could also be used to exchange client certificates between your devices, and them mTLS could be more user-friendly.
If you have the means also consider self-hosting. Or even writing your own server. Or your own client. The protocol and markup are so simple, all of these things are orders of magnitude more approachable than the modern web equivalents.
I rolled my own server using one of the Go libraries but probably could have gotten something working from scratch too in a few hours. For clients I use a tweaked version of elpher.el on the desktop and Lagrange on mobile. Gemtext (the markup) is a very nice match for Emacs btw. Unlike when browsing the web with eww, you can be sure that every Gemini page will display just fine in elpher.