Assuming my server environment supports both - which version (Perl or PHP) would you recommend I go for? The Forums will be a new feature for my site so it's difficult to predict usage. Site traffic is currently around 25,000 visitors a week. I'm a novice when it comes to any scripting language, so ease of installation/administration is an important consideration. Implementation schedule is flexible, so if a later version is on the horizon I'd like to know so I can choose whether or not to wait a while.
I've spent a bit of time evaluating which Message Board system to select. Seems to me WWWThreads is different class! Congratulations on an absolutely first-rate product!!

this is a common question, and many have their own opinions that may be different than mine. If you do a search through the various forums (in the search screen there's an option for "all forums") you'll find a lot of discussion on this.

The perl version running under mod_perl is roughly equivalent to speed as the regular php version. The perl version does run a bit slower, but it's hardly noticeable on most sites. If you expect 25,000 users a week to your site, then it might matter to you to go with the php version for speed.

As far as setup, php would probably be easier just for the sheer fact that there's less to install. A very important exception is the cron tasks. By cron tasks I mean anything that you set up to be automatically sent at times you specify. Examples of this would be subscriptions to your forums that your users sign up to get (provided you allow this). Erm, Poil talked about php allowing cron tasks via lynx, I believe... you'd want to get with him or someone in the know to get more info on that though, I'm not as knowledgable yet on php as I'd like to be.

I like Perl because I'm getting to know the language and can manipulate it better. There are more hacks and plug-ins provided with the perl version, mostly because it's been around a lot longer than the php version has.

If you're extra shaky on setting stuff up (cgi scripts in particular), perhaps the php version is for you. As far as W3T's site goes, there's better documentation (at least in the support library, what's included in the distros is different) for the Perl version simply because I haven't gotten around to doing the php version. I really want to get on that and hopefully will have the windows versions of php done by this weekend.

Sorry for the long post. I'd go with Perl, personally. There's a few more steps involved in set up, but they're not difficult steps and you may find you have more options available to you with the Perl version. That is quickly changing though so it's up to you.

Not sure if that helped any. []/testimages/icons/crazy.gif[/]



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Screamers

i would go for the php version. php is a pretty simple programming language and was built for use on the web. if you want to make your site a coommunity, it is easier to integrate your forums with the rest of your site. i personally think that there are more hacks for php. i think that w3t works well under a heavy load, i know that vb will crack. i personally think that th php version is easier to hack (but i guess that is cause i know what it looks like). anyways, if you wanted to integrate the forum into your site it would be easier to do in php. say you wanted to display the last ten posts on your index page. i use the w3t user database as the user database for my network. i built everything around w3t so that everything can be integrated with each other and what not.

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http://extremeforums.org

My thanks to both Dr. Doc and poil. My inclination is to go with PHP. The principal reasons being that it does look easier (to an ignoramous like me!) to install and also because it's more cutting edge. The slight speed advantage might prove useful - though it remains to be seen how many of my 25,000/week visitors participate in the Forums. Any comments that the PHP version was significantly less stable than the Perl version would have made me think twice. The fact that the documentation has a little catching up to do is understandable and something I can live with.
Thanks again for your responses.

A question about how this thread - and I've seen it with other threads too - is sequenced. Why is the order of the responses from poil/sixpack69 as it appears in "expanded index" view different from that in the "posts" view? And a supplementary if I may - how would someone who was familiar with the proper terminology have expressed that question!!??

OK, I think I figured it out. In the "posts" view posts are displayed in chronological order; in the "threads" view threads are displayed with the most recent first and the oldest last.