$html_output .= $q->start_html(-title=>'petnuch.com',
          -style=>{-src=>'/css/layout.css'}
          );

  $html_output .= banner($self);
  $html_output .= menu($self);
  $html_output .= create_error($self);
  $html_output .= footer($self);
  $html_output .= $q->end_html();
[download]

You can definitely shorten and simplify this code a great deal by using templates instead.

-sam

PS: While you're in the code - write some comments! No wonder you're finding this hard to maintain - it's 4,000 lines of code without a single hint as to what it's trying to do.

Agreed about the comments. But as far as me being able to simply the code a great dead by using templates I don't understand. If you look at what the functions (banner, menu, footer, etc..) do you will see this (I took menu as an example because it is the simpliest):

sub menu {

  my $self = shift;
  my $template = $self->load_tmpl('menu.tmpl',
        cache => 1
        );

  return $template->output;

}
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Those function calls are there because every page has a banner, a footer, a menu. The templates have various variables in them so that each banner, footer, whatever is customized depending where you are in the site. Are you really talking about something else? Any I using templates wrong?!?

Any I using templates wrong?!?

Yes - you should be using <tmpl_include> tags to do inclusion of sub-templates. And you're not using templates for all your HTML in the above example - CGI::start_html, for example.

-sam