Preface
This book is about getting your job done. More specifically, it’s about getting your job done more quickly, effectively, and enjoyably, especially if your job includes building and maintaining useful collections of information on the World Wide Web. Finally, and most importantly, it’s about getting these things done using the Perl programming language.
What this book is not about is everything else; it’s not about how to write HTML well, design professional-looking images, or create an effective navigation scheme for your web site. Nor is it about how to configure your web server software, perform basic system administration tasks, or maintain your web site’s Internet connection. I assume you already know those things, can find out about them somewhere else, or can find someone else to do them for you. Finally, this book is not about how to create a large web site using some sort of point-and-click web authoring application. Instead, my assumption is that you want to learn how to build your own web publishing solutions using the simple, flexible, and freely available tools that have built many of the most useful sites on the Web today.
On the most fundamental level, this book is about learning to move beyond the world of the computer user, and to begin moving toward the world of the computer programmer. That’s a big journey, with many stages, and this book does not pretend to take you all the way to the end. Instead, it concentrates on the first few steps, doing its best ...