HTML: everything from generated to WYSIWYG

[dwks]

[For reference, here's my website: http://dwks.theprogrammingsite.com/]

My website has undergone many changes. The first half a dozen or so versions of it I didn't even release. Then I wrote a version similar to what you see now. Then I modified it to use CSS.

Now I want to change it again. I was writing my website entirely in hand-coded HTML, and as you are probably aware this becomes very tedious. So I looked into alternatives, and eventually I came up with the Perl module Text::Template. It's neat: you can embed Perl code directly into a file. It works pretty well; I can automatically generate links.htm with the following (note that I made up the extensions):

links.ih

{
    $root = '.';
    $title = links;
    &include("$root/head.iht");
}
<h1>DWK's links</h1>

<p><big>H</big>ere are some links I've
accumulated. (On forums, unless otherwise noted, I'm usually the user
{&mono('dwks')}.)</p>

<p>Click <a href="links.htm" target="_new">here</a> to open a new window.</p>

{
    my $data = {
        'General' => [
            {
                'name' => 'Google',
                'url' => 'http://www.google.com/',
                'description' => 'My favorite search engine. ' . &mono(':)')
                    . ' To search for "C game programming", you can use ' .
                    &monolink("http://www.google.com/search?q=c+game+programming")
                    . ' -- useful for slow internet connections etc.'
            },
            {
                'name' => 'Wikipedia',
                'url' => 'http://www.wikipedia.org/',
                'description' => 'An online encyclopedia.'
            },
            {
                'name' => 'Firefox',
                'url' => 'http://www.firefox.com/',
                'description' => 'The home page for Mozilla Firefox, an excellent web browser.'
            }
        ],
        'Programming' => [
            {
                'name' => 'Dev-C++',
                'url' => 'http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html',
                'description' => 'The download site for Dev-C++, a free Win32 development enviroment for C and C++.'
            },
            {
                'name' => 'DJGPP',
                'url' => 'http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/',
                'description' => 'The download site for DJGPP (or RHIDE), a free DOS development enviroment.'
                    . ' It has POSIX support, and can compile really old programs that use DOS interrupts and int86'
                    . ' and graphics mode 13h.'
            },
            {
                'name' => 'Nehe',
                'url' => 'http://nehe.gamedev.net/',
                'description' => 'An excellent site (with tutorials) for OpenGL.'
            },
            {
                'name' => 'SDL',
                'url' => 'http://www.libsdl.org/',
                'description' => 'The offical SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) page. The SDL is a multi-platform'
                    . ' (Win32, Linux, Mac, etc) graphics (and sound, etc) library.'
            }
        ],
        'Programming forums' => [
            {
                'name' => 'CBoard',
                'url' => 'http://cboard.cprogramming.com/',
                'description' => "An excellent programming forum for C/C++/C# etc. There's also an FAQ, " .
    &monolink("http://faq.cprogramming.com/") . ' The main page is at (you guessed it) ' .
    &monolink("http://www.cprogramming.com/")
            },
            {
                'name' => 'TPSBoard',
                'url' => 'http://board.theprogrammingsite.com/',
                'description' => 'A good (but small) programming forum, with sections for C, C++, Java, etc.'
            },
            {
                'name' => 'DaniWeb',
                'url' => 'http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/',
                'description' => 'A very busy board for programming and technology.'
            }
        ]
    };
    
    foreach my $section (sort keys &#37;$data) {
        $OUT .= "<h3>$section</h3>\n"
            . '<ul class="linklist">' . "\n";
        
        foreach(@{$data->{$section}}) {
            $OUT .= &include('linkitem.iht');
        }
        
        $OUT .= "</ul>\n\n";
    }
}

{&include("$root/tail.iht")}

linkitem.iht

    <li><a href="{$_->{'url'}}">{$_->{'name'}} | {&mono($_->{'url'})}</a><br />
    {$_->{'description'}}</li>

The other files are boring, so I don't show them here.

But then I thought that links.ih was getting a little unwieldy. Perhaps I could use XML to store the data. So I'm looking into that.

I really should change that text . . . I wrote it in a few seconds as placeholder text, not thinking I would actually publish it . . .

Anyway, it just seemed like I was making everything too complicated. How else can I generate these webpages? What do people on this board use?

My website has Perl, PHP, and a MySQL database, if that means anything. Out of the three, however, I only know how to use Perl.

On the other end of the spectrum, I have a friend who knows absolutely nothing about HTML and wants to create a web page. What WYSIWYG editors or whatever could I recommend to them?

[edit] 5,200th post! [/edit]