I am looking for perl scripts to use with a college course website. The
development of the site is being done on a mac (a powerbook running Perl
5.2.0r4). The site will be initially hosted on Earthlink (unix) and
possibly moved to the university server (also unix) in the Fall for the
beginning of the course. The scripts need to be called from html pages and
run essentially the same way on macperl and unix perl.
Three scripts are needed:
1) a flexible site-search tool that will work on a site with heavy technical
vocabulary (computational molecular biology).
2) a logon tool to validate, authorize or register a site user. Most
students and co-instructors will be accessing the pages from their personal
internet accounts, so we can't use an edu domain filter -- each user will
need to have a verifiable username and password. Security is not a top
priority, but we plan to post some copyrighted course materials, and would
like to create an interactive, collegial atmosphere for the registered
participants.
3) a discussion/bulletin board tool that would allow course participants to
post and read comments. The instructors have used the "forum" module in the
WebCT software and have found that students really like being able to
communicate this way.
A quick search of CPAN didn't turn up what we were looking for. We could
try writing the scripts from scratch, but adaptable code would help. Thanks
in advance for suggestions.
Barbara Chapman
