Based on all the wisdom, advice and direction monks have kindly supplied in this thread, I've changed the setup of a newly created site...

/home/myusername/website/prod/www        <- webroot
/home/myusername/website/prod/lib        <- scripts
/home/myusername/website/prod/template   <- you can guess :)
/home/myusername/website/test/ ...

[download]

With a bit of experimentation I've found that scripts will run in the webroot. So, a config tweak and the default file provided in www is no longer index.html. Instead it is a Perl script that calls a couple of modules hidden away in lib which is where all the work gets done. I have not got very far yet with (re)building this site but already the arrangement feels better. More importantly it feels more secure which is rather important here.

Thank you to everyone who contributed here.

In reply to Re^8: Using relative paths with taint mode by Bod
in thread Using relative paths with taint mode by Bod

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