Perl for Web Site Management

Chapter 1. Getting Your Tools in Order

As I explained in the Preface, this book is intended for readers who have some experience creating web sites and now want to move to the next level, using the Perl programming language to create larger, more useful sites. In this first chapter, though, we won’t be discussing Perl. Instead, we’ll talk about some of the other things you’ll be using as you make that transition: a good hosting provider, the Unix shell environment, and a text editor for writing your programming code.

If you were setting out to climb a mountain (or even to take a short hike in the backcountry), you’d want to make sure you had everything squared away before you left the trailhead. That’s what this chapter is about: getting you set up properly with gear and supplies before you head into the wilderness.

If you already have a web-hosting provider you’re happy with, are familiar with using an ssh or Telnet client to log into a Unix shell session, and have a programmer’s text editor you’re happy with, congratulations! You should probably skip right to the next chapter, where I introduce the Perl programming language. Otherwise, read on.

Open Source Versus Proprietary Software

I assume in this book that you work in a Windows or Macintosh environment for your day-to-day computing. Much of the material I present, however, focuses on learning to work in a very different environment, that of the Unix and Unix-like systems upon which much of the Internet has been built. In ...