I'm looking for suggestions on a broad framework of a strategy for developing a website.

Choose a platform. That probably going to mean an OS, server software, a database, and a language to write your dynamic pieces in. LAMP is good. If this isn't the right time for you to learn Linux, you might start with WAMP instead. The "P" still means Perl.^†

All along, of course, you'll be thinking about the functionality you want to provide and issues like browser support, session management, authentication and authorization, persistent user data, multimedia, client-side dynamics, blah blah blah blah blah. Consider how these issues are going to affect code you need to write. Plan to separate logic, presentation, and data. Think about how you are going to do that. Try to choose ahead of time which modules or libraries you are going to use and which wheels you are going to re-invent. Choose carefully, because you are probably going to be pretty well locked into these choices in short order. Pick a good templating system. Maybe consider a whole framework like Catalyst.

Oh, and don't forget content. (Don't laugh... it seems to get forgotten all the time.)

Now, put it all together and wait for hits.

After you get your first 10,000 hits and then realize that they've all been from search engine crawlers, start thinking about marketing.

Broad enough?

† Or PHP. Or Python. But, this is Perl Monks, so what'd you expect?

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

Paint me suspicious (but if you do, please use water-soluble paint as my wife hates that colour on me), but it feels like you're almost asking someone to convince you to go to Linux. If so, please post your question on /.. They're good at blind linux advocacy.

That said, as someone who has avoided Windows like the plague for about 10 years with reasonable amounts of success (and attempts going back another 3 or 4 years prior to that with less success), I'll shut up now.

Well, mostly. I will say that you may want to figure out what you want to focus on - web, perl, or OS - and keep all other things constant. If you don't want to learn Linux, don't. Use Windows. If you don't want to learn .NET, don't. Use Perl. If you're willing and/or interested in trying other things, go ahead. Linux is free anyway, so it's only a commitment of time, not money, to try it. But don't do so because I tell you to do so, do so because you want to spend your time learning Linux. I did, and I like it. But you're not me, much to the world's happiness, and you may not be interested or may not like it, or may not have time. Those are all valid reasons to focus elsewhere.

As you said the real answer is "it depends on what you want to do". If you just want to display formatted data (and you have few security worries and not too much bandwith requirement) you could consider HTTP::Daemon.

If you want a quick display of data it is the business. I run it on Windows machines (it just requires Perl with no need for Apache or IIS). In addition the resulting web servers generally run on Linux without needing any modification.

Merylyn has written some really good articles about using HTTP::Daemon.

Of course if I am serving up lots of pages, or crunching lots of data, or worried about security then I would go with LAMP. Personally I think that setting up a web server on Linux is much simpler than a Windows one, there are lots of good books out there (of course this could be because I have been using Linux for some time).

Are we talking about a huge site that serves millions of hits a day, or are we talking about a personal site that sees a few hits a week?

I particularly like HTML::Mason, but it can be a bit overkill for a small site. It's very powerful and blah, blah blah, but it runs best under mod_perl, and cheap hosting isn't all that common. To get around these problems, you can use it to build static pages for upload, or run in CGI mode (with some serious overhead).

Web frameworks for Perl are almost as common as logging and text templating modules. Choosing one is difficult. Consider you requirements carefully, look at the major contendors, and go with what seems best.

As for the development environment, you really have a double barrelled language/development choice. My biased opinion is that you should consider the following combinations:

• Perl / mason *****
• Perl / Catalyst
• Perl / CGI::Application *
• Ruby / Rails *
• Tcl / OpenACS *****

Each of these has different pro's and con's and are good/better/best for different purposes. Ideally play with all of the above - they can all run on Windows or Linux.

I like that interpretation ;-)

I've been trying to think how to get PostgreSQL into the mix, as we don't use MySQL either.

Walking the road to enlightenment... I found a penguin and a camel on the way.....
Fancy a yourname@perl.me.uk? Just ask!!!

For a _website_ i would go with HTML::Mason For a _webapp_ i would go with Catalyst Oh and you can use HTML::Mason as the View in Catalyst too :)