> I think a mod_perl news and features site is a wonderful idea. Similar
> ideas:
>
> http://www.phpbuilder.org/
> http://www.apachetoday.com/
I envisage mod_perl news and features being a (small) part of this site. I
think far too much emphasis is placed on mod_perl. It's really not very
interesting from an end user point of view, even if it is the key stone of
the architecture for perl based web solutions. The mod_perl users we are
trying to help will most likely NOT be writing actuall Apache:: handlers,
and beyond that mod_perl is simply "CGI that goes faster and has all these
cool things like persistent DB handles and sessions, that I can make use
of".
There are arguments for an against MS' ASP architecture, but very little
talk goes on over Windows Scripting Engine, because although it's vital,
it's just not important :-). Likewise mod_perl.
> The problem, of course, is what technology do we use to build it ;-)
That's a trivial problem :-). Plain HTML would be a start.
> Anyway, after a little bit of discussion I'd like to see this move to
> the mod_perl list, to see what people think.
Again, my understanding of the mod_perl list is that it's about "mod_perl
the technology" in the way that c.l.p.m. is about "perl the language". Sure,
mod_perl is a key part of PAW, but so are DBI, Apache::DBI, TT,
Apache::Session, Embperl and the rest. Obviously we'll want their help and
involvement, and I'd like to see what they think, but this is fundamentally
NOT a technology excercise, and technology-only lists are probably not the
best place to drive it from.
IMHO, mod_perl has been represented as far more important than it is. People
then get all upset when they realise that actually it is a rather low level
element, and they aren't going to be doing anything productive until they've
installed another 10 modules and re-written their httpd.conf another 10
times. That's when people start to get cold feet about Perl as a web
solution.
