Actually, I much prefer most versions of Basic and Fortran over Perl. Even Python looks much easier to learn. But when I went looking for a successor to GW-Basic a long time ago I found that Perl is a modern language that can do just about anything. And it is still perhaps the only universally used language for Web sites.

I agree that it is slowly fading away. And that is in my opinion largely the fault of the Perl community. They don't seem to like change. I myself have had quite a few battles with them over the years.

Again, the arguments for staying with WWWBoard are, or actually the version you can find at:

http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/

1. It is easy to modify. I guarantee you could write any necessary Perl code with your eyes closed it is so easy to do after you learn a few basic commands.

2. The Web pages that the program generates have a format that people like. Most people are not technology oriented. And they don't like going to a bulletin board and seeing a lot of technical features. If you do enough of this work for a long enough period of time you will discover that the "Keep it simple" rule is preferred.

3. Multiple parties could contribute to the effort. With your newer program you will probably continue to be on your own for any development work.