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The Westfield Leader has been using Perl for more than a decade (since 1998), providing many essential functions. Over time they have received considerable learning help from the Perl community.

They are privately owned weekly newspapers in Westfield, NJ since 1890. Perl contributed to helping us digitize all of the archives, which run as far back as 1907, and they are now searchable on the Internet.

Perl provides point in time backup (20 minutes) for the composing of files during press time production by editorial staff.

"Sometimes a file may crash on our LAN during deadline and this saves the day."

Utilising Perl and rsync, they backup business data, sales data and production data for local archival, then sync this to a remote location that also runs using Perl and Debian servers.

Go Leader use a number of cgi scripts online help us conduct business with our advertisers and subscribers. The full database management of 10,000 paid subscribers, management and renewals which can be done online, by mail, and by phone is done with the help of Perl.

Almost all Perl things that are performed are custom designs tailored specifically to match internal business requirements. The team are almost entirely self taught and they have automate a great number of their business processes.

Perl and Debian servers with Windows workstations have enabled them to perform many things that otherwise would be financially impossible as well as challenging if at all possible with commercial, or off-the-shelf, software.

Out of gratitude, they recently contributed to the Perl 6 team for a new server. In their words:

"I'm writing you of this in hopes of inspiring others. We are not professional programmers but are able to succeed nevertheless. Thank you all."

• The Westfield Leader & The Scotch Plains-Fanwood TIMES
• PO Box 250, 251 North Ave. West, Westfield, NJ 07091
• Tel 908 232-4407
• Fax 908 232-0473
• Email press@goleader.com
• Copyright 2015
• www.goleader.com