There are a vast number of sites out there offering Perl scripts, free and otherwise, that will do pretty much anything that you could imagine on your site. Many are very good, functional, reliable and secure but there are also some poor quality scripts available that will give you nothing but grief and may even represent a security threat to your site or its users. How do you sort the wheat from the chaff?

When you go to a site that supplies a script you like there are a few ways of satisfying yourself that it is a good one from a reliable source. 

• There should really be a working demo available or links to examples of the script running on an actual site, if you cannot see the script in action hesitate to pay for it, though it may be worth downloading and trying a free one.

• Is there any support available at the site? Read whatever FAQs are there or visit the forum if there is one. Some of these forums are active and useful, others are full of lost souls struggling with scripts and failing to get any answers.

• Is there free email support with the script? This is a little much to expect with a free script but if you are paying you should get some level of support after buying.

• Is there an installation service? Not of course that you will need it by the time we are finished here, but it is a good indication of there being live support if such a service is offered. Some sites even offer free installation with their scripts but remember this will involve you giving FTP access to your site to strangers, so it is always best to install yourself if possible.

• Does the script actually do what you want? Check out its features carefully, email for further information if you are unsure. There should be some form of money back guarantee or the ability to download and install a trial version before paying if the script is not a free one.

• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, get recommendations. You can always post at OutFront to see if anyone has experience with a script you are considering or contact the owners and ask for references from other users. 

http://www.hotscripts.com/ 
http://cgi.resourceindex.com/  
http://www.cgi-world.com  - source of our sample script and some other really great scripts

The script chosen for our installation is a user poll script from http://www.cgi-world.com/. We used all of these criteria in above when looking for a script for this tutorial and came up with this one.

This one was chosen partly because it is free and compatible with older versions of Perl, so everyone can have a go at installing it, but also because it has wide appeal and is from a very reliable source of quality scripts. CGI World are creators of a range of very useful and high quality scripts, several of which I have personally used, and they provide excellent, prompt and helpful support.

Make a new folder in My Documents, or wherever else suits you, and call it Poll Script. Unzip the script to this folder when you have downloaded. Also take a few minutes to read about the script at the CGI World site. 

You can read about and download the script from here:

http://www.cgi-world.com/pollit.html - so what are you waiting for? Go get it!

In the next part of this tutorial we will take a look at the script and configure it for your server.

<< Part II: What You Need to Use Perl Scripts
>> Part IV: Configuring and Installing your script