Mailing Lists

Historical CGI & Perl Discussion Community

In the late 1990s, over 10,000 subscribers participated in the Script Archive mailing lists, discussing CGI scripts, Perl programming, and web development. These lists were a major community resource for webmasters learning to add interactivity to their sites.

Overview

The Script Archive hosted three mailing lists that served the web development community during the formative years of the World Wide Web:

  • New-Scripts
    Low-traffic announcements about script updates and archive news
    1-2/month
  • WWW-Scripts
    Active discussion forum for CGI and Perl questions
    25-50/day
  • WWW-Scripts Digest
    Daily digest version of WWW-Scripts
    1/day
Community Stats (1997)
  • Total Subscribers: 10,000+
  • WWW-Scripts Readers: ~1,000
  • Daily Posts: 25-50
  • Platform: Majordomo
  • Years Active: 1996-2000

New-Scripts

The New-Scripts mailing list was reserved for important announcements regarding the Script Archive. If you used any scripts from MSA, it was recommended to subscribe for news about:

  • Bug fixes and patches
  • Script upgrades
  • New script releases
  • Archive changes
  • Security advisories
  • Community news
Historical Subscription Method

Subscribers would send an email to [email protected] with subscribe new-scripts in the body.

WWW-Scripts

The WWW-Scripts mailing list was a high-traffic discussion forum with approximately 1,000 active readers. Members could ask Perl and CGI questions and typically receive multiple helpful responses.

Common Discussion Topics
Perl Programming

Syntax help, regular expressions, file handling, and module usage.

CGI Configuration

Server setup, permissions, debugging, and error troubleshooting.

Script Customization

Modifying archive scripts, adding features, and integration help.

Traffic Warning (Historical)

This list received 25-50 posts per day. For those who preferred less email, the Digest version was recommended.

WWW-Scripts Digest

The WWW-Scripts Digest provided the same content as WWW-Scripts but delivered as a single daily email containing all messages since the last digest. Each digest included a subject index at the top for easy navigation.

Benefits of Digest Format
  • Only one email per day
  • Subject index for quick scanning
  • All content in one place
  • Easier to archive locally
  • Less inbox clutter
  • Thread context preserved

WWW Archives

Searchable archives of all past postings were maintained and made available online. This was an invaluable resource for finding quick answers without waiting for responses.

Archive Coverage
WWW-Scripts Archives
  • 1997: January - September
  • 1996: January - December
Scripts-Help Archives
  • 1997: January - September
Note: The original archive hosting at gorski.net is no longer active. Modern alternatives include the Wayback Machine for historical research.

Modern Alternatives

While these mailing lists are no longer active, there are excellent modern communities for CGI/Perl discussion and web development help:

Stack Overflow

Q&A platform with active Perl and CGI tags. Searchable archive of millions of questions.

Visit
Reddit r/perl

Active subreddit for Perl programmers with discussion and help threads.

Visit
PerlMonks

Long-running Perl community with forums, tutorials, and code reviews.

Visit

Historical Acknowledgments

Wally Marsh III

Wam3 Consulting provided the Majordomo mailing list infrastructure that made these community discussions possible.

Darrin @ Gorski.net

Provided hosting and maintenance for the searchable WWW archives of www-scripts and scripts-help.

Frequently Asked Questions

No, these mailing lists were active primarily during 1996-2000 and are no longer operational. This page is preserved as a historical record of the early web development community.

Modern alternatives include Stack Overflow, Reddit r/perl, PerlMonks, Discord servers dedicated to web development, and the official Perl documentation at perldoc.perl.org.

The original hosting is no longer available. Some historical content may be preserved in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Try searching for gorski.net/scripts in the Wayback Machine.

Majordomo was one of the earliest mailing list management programs, written in Perl. Users subscribed by sending specially formatted emails. Modern equivalents include Mailman, Discourse, and services like Google Groups or Mailchimp.

Before web forums, social media, and Stack Overflow, mailing lists were the primary way for online communities to communicate. Email was universal, didn't require visiting specific websites, and worked well with the slow internet connections of the era.

CGI (Common Gateway Interface) itself is still supported but largely superseded by modern approaches like PHP, Python WSGI, Node.js, and containerized applications. However, understanding CGI provides valuable context for web development fundamentals.

While Perl is less common for new web projects, it remains actively developed and used in many legacy systems, bioinformatics, system administration, and text processing. Modern Perl frameworks like Dancer2 and Mojolicious offer contemporary web development capabilities.

At their peak, the combined mailing lists had over 10,000 subscribers. WWW-Scripts alone had approximately 1,000 active readers and received 25-50 posts per day. This was a significant community for the era.