I was very interested to see the tutorial on Perl by John Kennedy in the latest issue of CU Amiga, I wish it had been published a couple of issues ago.

For domestic reasons I had to give up my normal job in order to be able to work from home, and was faced with the prospects of either doing work I am not interested in or going broke.I decided to take the plunge and see if I could start a Web related business.

Briefly,I reckon the Net is under performing at local level and my aim is to set up a local site and target the local businesses. I mention this just as background information.

I opened a web forwading account with Demon (the local service providers could not have been less helpful) and set about creating a site. I very quickly learned that 'going commercial' is not quite the same as running a home page, the customers need their sites to work for them, and that involves CGI scripts and PERL. I also soon realised that in the commercial world you are left very much to your own devices, or are into hefty (for me at this stage) consultancy fees.

I have no computer programming experience beyond 'Hello World' on my Amiga in about every language ever devised, and the realities began to dawn on me, I had to get to grips with CGI and Perl or forget the project.

Key to my project are:
1. Form processing facilities.
2. Datbases.
3. A writeable Calendar/Diary.
4. Plus the usual other bits like a guestbook for example.

Plus the ability to put the whole thing together on my Amiga. (A400/030 + IBrowse & Termite TCP + Supra Fax Modem 288) I put the project on hold and set about the FAQ's at Demon where terms like Unix, MS-DOS, ZIP,TAR, CHMOD and Telnet started to crop up with depressing regularity. More FAQ's...Hint, print out FAQ's and start a folder. How do I install Perl on the Amiga, what's an Ixemul library etc etc..

The next step was to try and rig up the one facility that Demon supply for web forwarding customers namely Form-mail. A script for E-mailing forms results. To cut a long story short I stumbled at every step and after a week or so of experiment and research finally persuaded it to work. I was hooked. At this stage I was beginning to see how the process worked, and that maybe in time I could work with Perl.

When the project was conceived, I bought a very secondhand 486 PC for 300 with Windows 95 & CD ROM drive to enable me to 'talk PC' and test my web pages on another platform. My next step was to find a Perl/CGI reference book. It is interesting to note that not one member of staff at either of our local computer megastores had even heard of either CGI or PERL even though they stocked books on the subject. I eventually came away with a book by Eric Hermann entitles 'Teach yourself CGI programming with Perl 5 in a week...(knowledge required 'casual') this cost me 37.50 complete with CD. (ISBN 1-57521-196-3)

On with the crampons, and up the learning curve again. Cutting the story short again, this book plus the supplied scripts have made all the difference. In particular I discovered two websites with all the material and help I required to launch my project. I am indebted to these authors for their superbly documented scripts.

1. Matthew Wright at http://www.worldwidemart.com/scripts/
2. Selena Sol at http://www.eff.org/~erict/


I haven't learned Perl in a week, but working my way through this excellent book has given me the confidence to modify these scripts to suit my needs. I am now comfortable with the environment. Essentially, with patience and the Aminet everything is possible with an Amiga. Every utility I never even knew existed has been available. The reality is that with planning, 'Ed' or your favourite word processor is probably as good a web authoring tool as any commercial package. The PC has only really featured at the testing phase.

I am logging all the downloads and will be having a grand shareware paying session very shortly. These people must be supported. Readers wishing to see some CGI/PERL scripts in action are invited to visit my site at http://www.bingham-online.co.uk

The following scripts are in place and working...

Form-mail (Form processing)
Guestbook (A guestbook!)
Calendar (A writeable events calendar)
Countdown (A bit of fun really giving time to run to the millennium)
Class-ad (A classified advertisement utility)
Webstore (An online shopping facility)
Search (A search facility)
Links (A facility for users to add links to the site)
Db_manager (A database facility)


Visitors are encouraged to operate these facilities, and let me know of any problems. Please note that the site is under construction, so the content and presentation is not really very interesting yet, and the utilities may not yet be customised or acknowledged in some cases.

My next step is to start turning the site in to a working operation, and maybe it will look as good as the CU site eventually...especially now I know how frames work, thank you. If I am able to assist any readers contemplating a similar project, I am happy to receive E-mail or telephone calls. (Trivial matters took me days to sort out in some cases)

I hope I haven't bored you.


Regards

Dave Robinson