I use the CGI::Application framework, and for the front end jQuery and jQuery UI. mod_perl may be overkill for what you require, as may my CGI::Application approach. CGI::AppEasy - a quick way to give your perl program a web-based user interface may be worth investigating for your application.

You mentioned PhP, but do you also require that they run it thru a web interface? I mean, if they are commandline programs, would a simple GUI (Graphical User Interface) be ok, so they could run the program on their own computers? If so, you have a wide choice of GUI toolkits to choose from.

There is Tk, Tkx, Gtk2, and Wx just for starters. You could write simple little programs that let the non-geeks click on a button to run some CLI of yours. It would be alot easier than dealing with all the permissions problems that a web based program will present.

I'm just mentioning it. Do the non-geeks have the need to run the program from anywhere on the internet? If not, why expose your CLI program to the world?

Wow, thanks for all of your comments, this atleast gives me a direction to start. Any one have any recommendations for tutorials. I am inundated with Google results for these search queries.

As far as Web based vs. user based,

Mainly the tools are designed for administering my FTP server and the config files that live there. For instance I have one that extracts information and generates a report. To facilitate this as a standalone package it would require the app to talk to the server, complicating the whole process--(download necessary files, make changes, upload modified files)--whereas with an app that lives on the same server is able to access and display the necessary information.

The second issue I have with a stand alone app is porting it to multiple platforms. Obviously the server is a Linux OS, and I personally run Linux, however, Most of my users are Winblows users, and I have one MAC user. From what I understand Perl doesn't work well in Winblows, thus making an OS port a large scale if not futile effort. I could write it all in C++ or Java, but again I run into the issue of the application being required to download all the necessary files, make the changes, then upload the newly configured files.

That being said, I acknowledge the potential security risk of exposing the admin tools to the world. But then again, if the app is constantly uploading and downloading files from the server, this creates a security risk as well, agree? Any one have any suggestions on security, I have been lead to believe that .hataccess is less than secure.

Again, thanks for all of your help. I don't really have any experience in building web pages or UI's for that matter (maybe it's laziness, but I find I type alot quicker then I move my mouse around, so I've never needed to build a UI).

Finally, and pardon my ignorance, I thought CGI was mainly designed for database management and obtaining user information. Someone please set me straight, but I guess I'm missing something. I found this tutorial:

http://www.cgi101.com

Anyone have a better tutorial?

There are 2 general approaches to dynamic web content:
• Farm your needs out to an external program. CGI and ISAPI are two protocols that support this approach.
• Build an interpreter into your web server. PHP and mod_perl are two examples of this.
CGI is the simplest approach, but as it launches a separate process for each request and can be inefficient in high traffic environments.

ISAPI, PHP and mod_perl are faster but run in the same process space as the web server.

FastCGI may be a good compromise if CGI is too burdensome.

If you wind up creating a lot of HTML, etc., Perl Template Toolkit can be helpful in keeping the UI and the data separated cleanly.