I'm looking for suggestions on a broad framework of a strategy for developing a website. Here's a bit of a background and what I've considered so far. I admit this question is a tad general -- it's not about which modules to use, or a specific problem, but the general strategy I want to follow.

To date, Perl has been a language which I've used mostly personally, even when my personal purpose was for it to help make my job easier. Mostly, therefore, I've dealt with backend stuff -- getting data from databases, emailing reports around, parsing files, doing downloads from the web, etc., etc. So I'm considering my options...

I'm thinking of developing on my Windows XP box, downloading a web server for testing, and then using MySql for DB operations. The problem is since I'll be using perl (maybe Java or Ruby as well), I think the host environment would probably be Unix/Linux/Apache based, unless anyone would recommend any sites which have Windows IIS servers with capabilities to host perl/cgi driven sites (acronym: WIMP (win-iis-mysql-perl)?). I don't know whether this would create problems in itself. I believe it would keep me from using mod_perl, but don't know whether other options (like ISAPI) would make up for this.

Theoretically I could pay for the MS IDE and use .NET to do development instead, but that's not really palatable to my sensibilities as a developer and I'm not convinced that .NET is really so wonderful. Plus .NET code makes me cringe and causes my stomach to tighten in discomfort.

I could install Linux on my secondary box and use it for development. The only issue with this is that I'm not terribly familiar with Linux, having most of my experience in Windows-driven organizations. I don't know how much of a hurdle this would be. I'm also not familiar with other benefits of using Linux. If considerable, I could justify to myself the extra effort of learning it and getting my ISP to send me a Linux client disk.

Or is it better to work on hosting the thing myself to get the most control? Are there other dangers or major issues I need to beware of? Has anyone developed a perl website primarily on Windows boxes before? Is it a completely foolish idea?

And I figure TMTOWTDI, but there's also likely some bad ways to do it. I don't want to pick any of the bad ways ;).

Update: I also realize someone might (sensibly) ask "What do you want to do?". I don't know entirely, but I'm primarily interested in display of formatted and manipulated data, not e-commerce.

In reply to What's a good website framework? by SamCG

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