by mattwright on 3/2/25, 10:36 PM
30 years since I posted that first script back in high school! Thanks for all the love (and some hate) since then. :) Let me know if you have any questions, I'll try to answer.
by ekanes on 3/2/25, 9:01 PM
Gosh. Seeing that is kind of more ... emotional than I'd have expected. Gonna print a screenshot of it for the memories folder. It was just such a different time. Can't imagine what later generations would think was the point of things like a web counter, but golly that was so cool back in the day. :)
"Display a text count of visitors to your web pages. Includes: zero padding, file locking, linking the count, displaying begin date and counting multiple pages."
by dang on 3/2/25, 8:25 PM
by McGlockenshire on 3/2/25, 9:04 PM
Like many, I got my start with perl by finding myself having to customize a WWWBoard. The site owner then switched to a new perl based forum that used flat linear threads, the Ultimate Bulletin Board. (Which itself is based on code in Selena Sol's "Instant CGI/Perl"!) So, I learned that too. The guy that made it had a forum for it where other people were sharing their changes to the code, mind you this was a commercial product. The company ended up hiring a handful of us from that forum. I ended up doing the coding on the perl UBB for five years, launching my career.
So, thanks Matt. Your code may not have aged well, but it touched millions and millions of people.
by jimjag on 3/3/25, 1:03 PM
It cannot be stressed enough how _vital_ these scripts were to making the WWW an actual functional technical resource; These scripts were a key, if not the key, in growing the actual interactive web, showing the potential of CGI, and in guiding the evolution of web2.0 and beyond.
Its value and place in history can't be overstated.
by 89vision on 3/3/25, 4:34 AM
What a throwback! I discovered these as a kid in the early days of the web. I remember the perl being a little too obtuse to grok as a preteen, but I figured out where I could change things at certain parts of the code to make things look a little differently. Those were magical years that inspired me to get into coding and problem solving as an adult. Thanks Matt.
by cutler on 3/3/25, 1:20 AM
Much as I loved Perl when I started with it back in 2000 CGI.pm was pretty hacky with new vulns popping up every week. It's creator, Lincoln Stein was, however, one of the stable of Perl Jedi and he did a sterling job of keeping it patched with the help, if I remember, of Randall Schwartz. Them were th' days. CGI::Application was an improvement and my mainstay until the arrival of PSGI and Plack which paved the way for frameworks such as Dancer and Mojolicious.
by kev009 on 3/2/25, 11:10 PM
Programmatically generating web content felt so rad in the 1990s. It's funny to me now because with deeper historical knowledge it's not a lot different than what many block-mode green screen systems were doing for a long time before that. Of course it grew up into something more, but the early web was not much different than that with fonts and image embeds and relying on the underlying transport and naming system to make it easy to span.
by xnx on 3/2/25, 8:50 PM
Wow. Amazing that this page exists virtually unchanged from 30 years ago.
We've definitely lost some part of the charm of the early web when it was common to get email, web space, FTP, and even shell access from your ISP.
by bergie on 3/3/25, 3:31 AM
Oh wow. That brings back memories. I think every site I built back then at least used that FormMail script.
Then we started transitioning to Lisp, and somehow ended up with PHP.
In any case, I don't think I'd be here without your help, Matt. Big, big thanks!
by notadev on 3/2/25, 9:49 PM
WWWBoard is such a nostalgia hit. My local music venue's forum was where my early internet persona originated. Sometimes I nostalgic and use Wayback machine to see what all my fellow teenagers were talking about 25 years ago.
by kirse on 3/3/25, 1:20 AM
by waveforms on 3/2/25, 11:09 PM
wow, thanks Matt. You and Lincoln Stein (Bioperl founder if I remember correctly) got me started with my first website.
by morganf on 3/2/25, 8:51 PM
OMG. Just the name brings back memories.
by threeio on 3/2/25, 9:48 PM
I spent so much time hacking on scripts from here in the those early internet days... ahh memories.
by marban on 3/3/25, 12:35 PM
I wonder how many users still pay for formmail.com
by zekenie on 3/3/25, 1:34 AM
CGI bin babbbyyyyyy
by locusofself on 3/2/25, 11:21 PM
oh wow. This is one of those things that I remember, but I never would have thought of it specifically. Formmail.pl !
by ourcat on 3/2/25, 9:32 PM
Ahhh, WWWBoard. Those were the days!
by Tijdreiziger on 3/2/25, 9:01 PM
Last updated in (2009), it seems.