Remember Perl? Five Ways It Could Help Your Website
Developed in 1987 by Larry Wall, Perl is one of the most flexible programming languages, offering users with thousands of different applications through its dynamic, open source platform. Aside from the cost benefits of bringing a community project to clients, there are a number of benefits to using Perl in your next design project.
- Cross-website Promotion
- Automation
- Email Support
- Multimedia
- Module Usage
Perl is a great way to enable easy content sharing between websites and platforms, including social media and content sharing sites. In fact, DeviantART, a leading artwork sharing website, uses Perl to enable users to post their work on other websites and gain exposure. This automated process can be accomplished in a few clicks with the help of Perl, making it a great tool to introduce to clients.
Automation is the key towards satisfying many clients’ needs in today’s web market, and Perl is a user-friendly way to fulfill this need. Whether you want to install a customized customer feedback form or manage a forum community, Perl allows you to customize these features without a lot of ongoing maintenance for your clients. Perl supports SQL and other common database languages as well.
There are currently a number of viable email projects being supported by the Perl community, and its open source nature means that your clients can get enterprise level delivery and security without paying for yearly licenses and upgrades. By using Perl to manage your clients’ email needs, you’ll be passing on significant savings long term.
In today’s web 2.0 world clients want more ways to engage and interact with their visitors. Perl is a great way for your clients to store and manage their multimedia content, including podcasts and other marketing tools. When used in conjunction with cloud storage techniques, Perl provides a variety of simple ways for website visitors to get this type of content on demand without lengthy download times and buffering.
Because Perl is broken up into a variety of modules that serve a specific purpose, web developers need only to review these with their clients and install them upon request. This eliminates the need for fully customized coding while still allowing for specific tweaks if needed. These community developed modules allow website owners to accomplish tasks that would be too difficult to do on their own and more expensive to develop.
Perl’s versatility is a big reason for its popularity, but more people are turning to it thanks in large part to the existing community of users. Though Perl has been around for 25 years, it remains on the cutting edge of web technology.