OT: Q re getting started in web publishing....

[Will]

Just to echo some of what has already been said, PHP is very likely the cheapest and easiest way to do any sort of dynamic content. For a while, MySQL has sort of been the default SQL server with PHP, but recently PostgreSQL has been gaining more popularity because it's also free, and doesn't have some of the syntactic differences that MySQL has from SQL proper (a lot of developers complain about the "weird" non-standard ways MySQL does things).

As far as Dreamweaver, it's really a tossup whether to get it or not. If you're already fairly advanced in HTML, and can create a basic page quickly (a minute or so), I would say ditch the idea of using Dreamweaver. The cost isn't really worth it for something you'll have to cut up to use PHP in anyway. If you're slower at it, Dreamweaver might be worth the cost to get the general layout right before you add in the PHP stuff.

And I think Fyron just had some bad experiences with perl. It's an increadibly useful language as long as you get a decent manual. I have the O'Rielly book "Programming Perl", which focuses on more general purpose uses of perl, and I also have an old book on CGI that uses perl and C examples for CGI scripts. For your uses, I would say look for a book that both introduces perl, and shows how to use the various packages for CGI stuff.