Can you recommend a good Perl-based forum software? A group I'm involved with has been using PHP solutions, and, not surprisingly, has gotten hacked three or four times. E-Blah looks pretty secure. -- TheerasakPhotha

I don't have much experience in running forums, so I'm not really a good person to ask. On the other hand, I'd never heard of E-Blah before, so I took a look at it. My advice to you: do not go near it under any circumstances. The code is awful - in fact, it's so rotten that I now have it bookmarked under "examples of bad Perl". There is no way that this code can be considered secure. Perl has a "taint" mode for dealing with unverified data. E-Blah's author has clearly never heard of it, let alone the "warnings" or "strict" pragmas, which should never be left out, ever. Avoid it like the plague. 

Sorry to not have any positive suggestions. Good luck. -- EarleMartin

* '''HURK!!!''' I have pretty good intuition usually, but this one was WAY off! Even I know better than to elide the strict and warnings pragmata! I should have actually looked at the code instead of Googling for crack frequency... :?

Style hint: look classy among fellow Perl programmers by using the term 'pragmata'; not only does it sound like some kind of armor, it also reinforces any Latin lessons you might be taking...lorica cameltata, LOL. -- TheerasakPhotha ''(...PerliGata)''

* This is a LOLapalooza!

I hope you don't mind my jumping in here. I downloaded E-Blah, and I'm looking at the cgi-bin/forum/Code/Login.pl script. I'm not the PerlLanguage expert that Earle is, so I won't comment on the Perl. I will say that this file contains some of the most hideous HTML I've seen in a while -- hideous without being generated by a WYSIWYG like FrontPage, that is. (Well, maybe it was created by a WYSIWYG then chopped up for embedding in the Perl.) It even creates links that are JavaScript''''''s which muck around in your browser history. Feh. Poopy HTML isn't going to make the product insecure, but it sure is disappointing to look at. -- ElizabethWiethoff
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Many WikiEngines are written in Perl.

The OpenDirectoryProject lists over a dozen message boards written in Perl:
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Programming/Languages/Perl/WWW/Scripts/Message_Boards/

Is there a better place to discuss the pros and cons of available message board software?

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CategoryPerl