http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=200294

spartacus9 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

the association i work for has tasked us with developing a program that will allow our members (about 100,000 physicians) to create their own small web sites to promote their practice. we have a large web site with many services geared toward our members, but there has been a heavy focus over the last year on a new system allowing our physicians to put their practice on the web. their vision is a system that will be similar in nature to that offered by webMD and yourMD.com. Aside from the obvious hardware issues that will need to be addressed in order to offer a service of this volume, there are some major software decisions that need to be made here.

Our strongest language amongst the four programmers, myself included, is Perl, and that is most likely the language we will use in development, probably using MySQL to store the data and using modules like HTML::Template to render the output.

Before we start developing our own home-grown system, I would like to solicit the advice of fellow monks who may have developed similar systems or know of existing open source software that can be customized to meet our needs. This program will have to be extremely flexible, allowing the inclusion of photos, office schedules, lists of office staff, etc. Any suggestions or experience to offer? I would rather not re-invent the wheel if there is a flexible product or solution out there.