There's been some talk lately about this new-fangled Apache module called mod_perlite a.k.a. the do-it-all like mod_php but better module for Perl.

Since by nature I am a curious kind of guy looking for yet another interesting challenge, I'm going to have a look at it for myself.

The idea behind mod_perlite is appealing. As a lightweight replacement for mod_perl, mod_perlite is much easier to install, embeds a Perl interpreter in high memory, supports the core CGI functions and has a much smaller memory footprint.

Good old mod_perl is very powerful indeed. I've done alot with it and think it's a fantastic beast. However, it is simply not accessible to the average bloke because it is complex and hard to learn. Have you ever realized how heavy the book Practical mod_perl is with its nearly one thousand pages?! Also, hosting companies are not eager to allow its subscribers to twiddle around with potential dynamite and having to support poor customers sucked down in mod_perl quicksand.

Hey, let's make Perl as easy as PHP for regular users to deploy and for web hosting companies to give as an appealing dynamic web application server stack!

For those masses of kind folks out there who are not computer savvy and not waiting for the headaches of fighting mod_perl, this makes mod_perlite a no-hassle and feasible solution for the low-end plain vanilla servers out there.

Imagine how screaming fast it could be on quad servers hooked up together to provide high performance dependable web solutions.

Perhaps even Lighttpd can come into the picture, why not? Hey now, that's an interesting idea. Writing Lighttpd modules is fairly effortless and hooking this up with Lua could become a real eye-opener.

Wouldn't it be nice to have an one-two-three web server setup that installs easily and just does what it is supposed to do? The blog server market is exploding and could very well benefit from this.

I've got some time on my hands for the next week so I'm going to check mod_perlite out for myself.