Welcome back, Perl.com

Dec 6, 2017 by Jim Brandt and David Farrell

When we started discussing how we could start publishing fresh content on Perl.com again, we were looking for an easy solution. As the site lacked an editor, we initially considered syndicating community content from various sources as a fairly automatic way of keeping the site updated. But as we talked through various solutions, and re-familiarized ourselves with the rich content and history of Perl.com, it became clear that there was a bigger opportunity.

Between 1997 and 2014, over 700 articles were published on Perl.com. The authors list reads like a Perl Programmer hall of fame. Perl.com was the original home for Perl tutorials, Larry’s State of the Onion talks, and Perl 6. It has everything from detailed guides on Unicode, to the advanced Perl programming series’ “Where Wizards Fear to Tread”. Various editors had maintained the site over the years, but in 2014 the site went without a full-time editor, so it has remained in its 2014 state, both technically and in terms of content.

David started PerlTricks.com in 2013, originally as “quick tips” Perl site. Over time it matured into a site better known for high quality content and the monthly “what’s new on CPAN” articles. It also has a more modern, mobile-friendly design.

Looking at the timeline and the type of content available on both, we thought it made sense to just merge the two sites and refresh Perl.com. So that’s what we did.

Soon PerlTricks.com will redirect requests to Perl.com and David will become the managing editor of Perl.com. The new Perl.com site has almost 1,000 articles, all Creative Commons licensed - a powerhouse of content with The Perl Foundation as its custodian. This isn’t one person’s site, it’s our site. And with a new search bar and all articles categorized and tagged, it’s easier than ever to dive into the content and learn something new about Perl. The site’s source code is on GitHub, and new Perl authors are just a pull-request away.

We’ve got high hopes for Perl.com, and exciting plans that we’ll share over the coming months; but for now we just want to say welcome back, and we hope that you’re as excited about this opportunity as we are.