you want to build a perl cgi from scratch?? i dont know much about object orientated perl if thats what your after... anyway, personally i would get it looking however you want it first, then when you test your perl script you can see how it works. for the perl

use CGI;

$query = new CGI;

# start the html output

print STDOUT $query -> header();
print STDOUT $query -> start_html ( -title=> "Message board.cgi", -BGC
+OLOR=>"yellow");
print STDOUT "\n<h1><align=center>PUT YOUR TITLE HERE</CENTRE></H1>\n"
+;

# retrive info from the html form using he param function
# e.g

$people = $query ->param ('people');

# do this for all your variables

# design some failsafes using perls regular expressions so that
# if nothing has been entered in the message box they get a warning 
# message

if ($message !~/\w+/)
{
print STDOUT "<P> you have not entered a message\!\n";
print STDOUT $query -> end_html;
exit (0);
}
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on your html form you need to a comand that accesses the perl script. it should look something like this

<form method ="post"
action ="http://www.whereever/directory/myCGI.cgi"
enctype="multipart/form-data">
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Hope this was what you were after. Lolly :)