(First thanx all for your informative replies. Mason seems very nice, I feel a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.)

I was just looking into this mod_perl issue. I notice that there is a way to use Mason with just a cgi handler, but this requires adding some configuration to apache, which I assume will not be allowed at (eg) sourceforge. Still not a too big a deal I guess...plain 'ol CGI + AJAX can do a lot. When I really have something that deserves more, I will just have to dish out $20/month for a slice somewhere.