Not to toot my own horn, but I will. The Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours (Not "21 Days"!) book has a very concise but thorough of all of the basic CGI techniques you need. It's only $20. An electronic edition will be available in the Linux Web Page Construction Kit when that's published in a few months. Sean Burke did a nice review of it on Amazon's site (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672317737), it passes the Perl Book Litmus test with ease and is generally regarded as a decent source of clues. I use it as a textbook for teaching Perl and CGI programming. And if you have any questions about it, just write me. I stand behind every word written. Even the typos. :)