The first part of my wee side-blog add-a-link app is done It's used to post links and blurbs to the side-bars of my site using a browser interface, allowing link-logging to be done by any number of people (in any number of locations). I took my time with this script to try a few different approaches ... and discovered several things about CGI, CSS, and Unix in the process.

Link data is stored in a tab text file per side-blog which is transformed into HTML when links are saved. The web interface is built as a Perl script and template (stored separately) The interface is styled with CSS to make it more like a real application (the text fields resize with the browser window). The side-bars are added to the main pages of the site using Apache server-side includes. This allows the side-bars to be updated independently of the site.

I'm planning on adding a few more features to the scripts before posting the source, including simpler installation and better security. I'm also thinking about adding an interface for editing the database (remove/update entries).