Copyright (c) 1998, 1999 by Jonathan Swartz. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. Welcome to Mason, a full-featured web site development and delivery system. Mason allows web pages and sites to be constructed from shared, reusable building blocks called components. Components contain a mix of Perl and HTML, and can call each other and pass values back and forth like subroutines. Components increase modularity and eliminate repetitive work: common design elements (headers, footers, menus, logos) can be extracted into their own components where they need be changed only once to affect the whole site. Other Mason features include a graphical site previewing utility, an HTML/data caching model, and the ability to walk through requests with the Perl debugger. INSTALLATION To install Mason, run the standard sequence: perl Makefile.PL make make install After Mason is installed, you will need to activate it by adding some directives to your Apache configuration files, and customizing Mason's Config.pm and eg/handler.pl files to match your system. The included pod docs have been pre-converted to HTML for you and placed in the htdocs/ directory. The Mason overview (a good place to start) is in Mason.html. GETTING HELP The official Mason web site is at http://www.masonhq.com. There you'll find Mason documentation, news, etc. A recent copy of the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) list is included in this release under the faq/ directory. For the most recent version you'll want to go to the web site. The Mason mailing list, maintained by Kirrily Roberts, is an excellent place to ask questions and learn techniques. To subscribe, email mason-request@netizen.com.au and put "subscribe" in the body of your message. You can search and browse the archives at http://www.netizen.com.au/resources/lists/mason/. If the question is more generally about mod_perl, you may wish to post additionally (or only) to the mod_perl mailing list at modperl@apache.org. If you have a question or comment that you don't feel is appropriate for the group, write to the author at swartz@transbay.net. REPORTING BUGS Send bug reports to the Mason mailing list for quickest response. It is a good idea to search the mailing list archives first to see if the problem has already been reported. For all bug reports indicate your architecture, Apache/Perl/module versions, etc. For installation problems send your handler.pl and httpd.conf. For component problems try to isolate the bug in a single small component or set of components, and send those. CONTENT MANAGEMENT There is a companion content management system for Mason, maintained by Mark Schmick. CM is a web-based interface to your component and content files; it allows designers and programmers to work on a site remotely without resorting to ftp or telnet. It supports staging/production sites, RCS versioning of files, global content searching, and a host of other features. CM is written entirely as a set of Mason components. Find out more and download a copy at http://www.masonhq.com/Mason-CM/. LICENSE Mason was originally developed for the Internet technology group at CMP Media, a publisher of technology magazines. CMP graciously supported our efforts to release Mason as open source software to the Perl community. However, CMP has NO direct involvement with the open source release and bears NO responsibility for its support or maintenance. Mason is provided "as is" and without any express or implied warranties, including, without limitation, the implied warranties of merchantibility and fitness for a particular purpose. Mason is released under the same terms as Perl itself. For more information see the "README" or "Artistic" files provided with the Perl distribution. AUTHOR Jonathan Swartz swartz@transbay.net