Again you bring up alot of good points. When i mentioned the speed difference between PHP and PERL I was talking plain perl. The main reason being if you don't have your own server then chances are you won't be allowed to run under mod_perl. At least I haven't found a hosting company yet that will support it, unless you buy your own dedicated server[]/testimages/icons/wink.gif[/]. So it is really a good point about PHP because you can get the same speed without the need to be on a dedicated server.
Gossamer-threads does have excellent scripts and yes they do support templates. But they generate html pages, last I checked. I very well could be wrong, but the demo of links sql says they still do. Everything here is on the fly, dynamic. If I could change it to build static html pages then there would not be a problem at all. I'm not saying that it can't be done because I made an attempt at this about a year ago. And we did have templates going on a test site but as soon as we got some traffic it went downhill.
I used to be a total PERL nut. PHP? Why, I can do everything I need to do in PERL. I was very reluctant to try doing anything with PHP but once I got started I immediately saw the advantages. Like I said it is going to allow me to do alot of things that I wouldn't be able to do in PERL. I'm not saying that PHP is the only way to go, or that PERL sucks because that's just not true. PERL is great and it did very well for building this product but I just see a big advantage of using PHP to take it to the next level.
Anywho, all I'm out to do is put out a good product. I know alot of people think it might be about the money. I know that if I say it's not then I just sound like Alex Rodriguez[]/testimages/icons/wink.gif[/], but it's not. I work a full time day job that I really enjoy and I have built this thing in my spare time only, just because I enjoy it. I could see that I was going to start falling behind other forums because I couldn't spend enough time developing features so I had a couple of choices. Either quit my day job, and that isn't going to happen. Take on a few development partners, which would have increased the backend headache. Or sell to someone that was going to allow me to just focus on development and making the customers happy. Hopefully, given time the decision will be seen as wise. I realize I may lose a few of you, which I truly don't want to happen, but I don't want to just keep a good product going. I want this thing to be great![]/testimages/icons/wink.gif[/]
