CGI is simple, easy to understand, and fairly portable, since it's just an interface between the web server and a child process that reads the environment and standard input, and provides a simple text interface on standard output.

But to get performance, we can't fork on each request. That's the death knell. So many "servlet"-type solutions have arisen, with probably the most popular being the mod_perl under Apache. After all, that's what The Monestary uses. {grin}

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker