"I am creating a very simple site. It is Perl 5. Using CGI"

The documentation states:

"CGI.pm is no longer considered good practice for developing web applications, including quick prototyping and small web scripts. There are far better, cleaner, quicker, easier, safer, more scalable, more extensible, more modern alternatives available at this point in time. These will be documented with CGI::Alternatives."

Make web development fun again, I suggest investigating Mojolicious::Lite.