mod_perl Related Software

Applications running under mod_perl

These application give you an idea of the range of products available for use with mod_perl, which are granted extra speed and/or functionality by taking advantage of the Apache API.

Content Management Systems

• Krang is an Open Source web-publisher / content-management system designed for large-scale magazine-style websites. It is a 100% Perl application using Apache/mod_perl and MySQL, as well as numerous CPAN modules.
  Krang provides a powerful and easy to use story and media editing environment for magazine editors, as well as a complete template development environment for web designers. On the back-end, Perl programmers can customize Krang to control the data entered in the story editor and add code to drive the templates to build output. Krang can be enhanced with add-ons containing new skins and other new features. Krang easily handles large data sets and can manage multiple websites in a single installation.
• Bricolage is a full-featured, open-source, enterprise-class content management system. It offers a browser-based interface for ease-of use, a full-fledged templating system with complete programming language support for flexibility, and many other features. It operates in an Apache/mod_perl environment, and uses the PostgreSQL RDBMS for its repository.
• Slashcode is the codebase behind the highly popular Slashdot site. It provides content management and discussion possiblities for its users, and can support a high load of users, with self-moderation because of the high number of comments.
• Everything is an information management system, using a combination MySQL and Perl to create a flexible system of entering, linking, and retrieving information. Its codebase is for example used to run Perl Monks, a Perl community site.
• Scoop is a "collaborative media application". It falls somewhere between a content management system, a web bulletin board system, and a weblog. Scoop is designed to enable your website to become a community. It empowers your visitors to be the producers of the site, contributing news and discussion, and making sure that the signal remains high. Was written originally for Kuro5hin.org, which is still the biggest Scoop site.
• The WYPUG website is powered by a CMS called Shapeshifter that is written entirely in Perl and designed to run under mod_perl (in Registry mode). It's a template-based, database-driven CMS with some unique features. It's not finished yet, hence the lack of documentation or an advocacy website - but it's not far away. The system will be a commercial product once finished, but it'll be released under an Open Source license. Inquiries should go to Digital Word.
• Movable Type is a web-based personal publishing system. It is designed to ease maintenance of regularly-updated news or journal sites, like weblogs. The Movable Type system runs on your own webserver, giving you complete control over your site.
• Metadot provides secure, web-based collaboration and content management software that allows non-technical users to build and manage intranets, extranets, and project spaces.
• WebGUI (pronounced web-gooey) is one of the most popular open source content management systems (CMS) available today. It is a platform built to allow average business users to build and maintain complex web sites. It is modular, pluggable, and platform independent. It was designed to allow the people who create the content, to manage it online, rather than content management taking up the time of the busy IT Staff.
• Callisto CMS is an XML/XSL Web-based Content Management System built on AxKit. It supports WYSIWYG XML content editing, transactional site deployment to multiple target webservers, multiple users, virtual hosting support and other features.
• EplSite WorkFlow System and Portal Web based on EmbPerl and MYSQL database.
• Mason-CM is a web content management system for arbitrary file based web productions, based on Mason. It's optimized to manage multiple sites of SMB's, together with multiple graphic designer companies or professional content contributors. Mason-CM has all the basic needs of web content management as versioning, rollback, staging and productive area, trashcan, locking and search. Files, ASCII and binaries, can be viewed or downloaded. It supports remote filesystems and more.
• Spine is a web based Content Management System, implemented in mod_perl and released under the GPL (GNU Public License). It requires Apache version 1 or 2, a mod_perl installation to match and a database (PostgreSQL or MySQL). It features mixed static/dynamic content, separated template and content administration, granular privileges, user-friendly URLs, file manager, plugins, ...

Forum Software

See above too, many of the CMSes above feature very good discussion capabilities.

• mwForum is an open-source, Web-based discussion forum system. mwForum is based on Perl CGI scripts, uses a MySQL database and is compatible with mod_perl for optimal performance. mwForum's design goals are comfortable operation and administration, stability, security and speed, a professional and consistent look, and lean and clean code to make customization easy.
• WebBoard is the number-one selling message board software in the marketplace with over one million sites using it as their primary means for communication. The software has long served as a highly reputable online education tool that can run both as a stand-alone product and as an integrated element within other learning management systems. Many installations of WebBoard are also used for customer service and corporate intranet communication.

Webmail servers

• acmemail is a multiuser IMAP/POP3 to Web gateway (or webmail program). It reads mail from a mail server and displays it using HTML on a web server. It is written in Perl, has full support for MIME (and mod_perl) and is quite pretty.

• @Mail is a fully featured Web Mail server that allows you to set up Web Mail at your domain or server existing POP3 accounts. Including full source code, under a commercial license.

  @Mail Includes auto-account creation via Sendmail/Exim/Qmail , scheduler, SQL mailbox support, spell check, group address-book, user preferences, multiple accounts, migration scripts from other mail-servers, attractive DHTML interface, Anti-Virus integration, User Payment service and in-depth Web-based administration of accounts.

• WING is an Open Source Apache/mod_perl based system which allows users to access email held on an IMAP server via any web browser.

Calendars

• Chronos is a Web agenda/calendar for Intranets (but it can be used from anywhere). It can send reminders by email. It can schedule multi-user events. It is fast and light on resources. It is not proprietary, ugly nor buggy.
• CyberCalendar is a calendar of events program for the web and PDAs written entirely in Perl.
• WebCalendar is a powerful group calendaring and scheduling system. It is a web based application that makes it easy to publish and manage calendar events on the internet. WebCalendar includes an impressive set of business class features. Its easy to use interface, rich functionality, and sophisticated scheduling system makes it one of the best calendar applications on the internet.

Other

Of course, not every application running under mod_perl is a Content Management System or a Forum!

• Loggerithim is monitoring package for Linux and Solaris (with early support for OS X and Win32). It allows you to collect metrics from your hosts and analyze them with graphs and whatnot. You can also set thresholds for proactively spotting problems. Modules can be written to supplement the stock data collection.
• DnsZone is a fully functional application for Apache/mod_perl. It implements a web based interface for managing zones with a nameserver running BIND.
• DAD is a comprehensive website ad management system. It is a mod_perl application with advanced targeting capabilities, a comprehensive administrative interface, and automatic client reporting. Because it uses mod_perl, DAD can take advantage of Apache API elements like subrequests and notes, and it can rely on persistent database connections through DBI. These features allow DAD to efficiently implement advanced targeting rules that would be impossible under CGI.
• Ringlink is a Perl program that provides the tools you need to run one or more rings of web sites, i.e. systems of links between web sites of a similar topic, content, or interest.
• Request Tracker (RT) is an industrial-grade ticketing system. It lets a group of people intelligently and efficiently manage requests submitted by a community of users. RT is used by systems administrators, customer support staffs, NOCs, developers and even marketing departments at over a thousand sites around the world. It can run under mod_perl for performance benefits, and is the software behind rt.cpan.org.
• OTRS is an open source Ticket Request System and email management system with many features to manage customer telephone calls and email. The system is built to allow your support, sales, pre-sales, billing, internal IT, helpdesk, etc. department to react quickly to inbound inquiries. It is useful for people who receive many emails and want to answer them with a team of agents. It has been tested on Linux, Solaris, AIX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Mac OS 10.x.
• Namp! is Not Another Music Player. In combination with the Apache web server and mod_perl, Namp! lets you create a virtual jukebox of your MP3, WAV and Ogg Vorbis music files, browse them over the web, create playlists, and stream them.
• Mod_Survey is a web questionnaire system implemented as a mod_perl module for Apache. It is used as a content-handler for ".survey" files, or in other words for files containing surveys described in an XML-based tag notation defined in the Survey v3.0.0 DTD. The system targets an audience consisting of people who need powerful questionnaire and data handling features.

The Mason project also has a list of applications running under mod_perl and HTML::Mason.

Toolkits for use with mod_perl

See the Apache/Perl module list and Application Servers and Toolkits based on mod_perl for a list of modules and toolkits running allowing you to tackle web development more easily under mod_perl.

Compatible products

Freeware:

• Ralf S. Engelschall's mod_ssl
• Ben Laurie's Apache-SSL

... and many more. Most of the modules for Apache should be able to be used more or less integrated with mod_perl.

Commercial:

• RedHat's Stronghold, which embeds a number of Apache modules, including SSL support and Matt Sergeant's AxKit, which is an XML Application Server running under mod_perl.

Products allowing fast web programming and integration with web servers

Freeware, source code distribution:

Perl

Other software solutions exist to run Perl faster than with CGI for web application development. You may want to try these if mod_perl isn't what you need.

• SpeedyCGI is a way to run CGI perl scripts persistently, which usually makes them run much more quickly.
• FastCGI is a language independent, scalable, open extension to CGI that provides high performance without the limitations of server specific APIs.
• PPerl turns ordinary perl scripts into long running daemons, making subsequent executions extremely fast. It forks several processes for each script, allowing many proceses to call the script at once.
• Ben Sugars' nsapi_perl (Perl plugin for Netscape - not actively developed anymore)

Other Languages

Many other languages feature Apache modules to facilitate web development, many being inspired by mod_perl.

• The Tcl-Apache integration project, providing similar functionality to mod_perl but with the Tcl programming language.
• Mod_python is an Apache module that embeds the Python interpreter within the server.
• mod_ruby embeds the Ruby interpreter into the Apache web server, allowing Ruby CGI scripts to be executed natively.
• PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.
• Tomcat is the servlet container that is used in the official Reference Implementation for the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies.

Commercial, binary distribution:

• ActiveState's PerlEx (Perl plugins for O'Reilly WebSite, Netscape and IIS)

If you know of other mod_perl related software products, please send a description to the docs-dev mailing list.