i did more or less the same thing once.

i did my own templating system, because HTML::Template didn't do all i wanted, but in retrospect i wish i'd changed my wants instead.

we ran many web servers (mod_perl of course) and one oracle DB server (sun) which, once we finally got oracle optimized, was rockin' fast with pretty high traffic.

anyway... if i were you, based just on what you said, i would do it live. AND, ya know what? i would think very carefully about the site logic beforehand, and then have URL's like "http://www.somestorethingy.com/products/widgets.html" or whatever -- and let apache rewrite them into things like /products.cgi?page=widgets or what have you. assuming you want "nabbable" URLs that's the smartest way to go.

the *only* time in my project when live sucked was when i was asked to make a static version of the whole shebang so the database could be retired (company merger).

anyway, that's just one report from the trench(es). good luck with your project.

-- frosty
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