I also did some Perl and that was super common. I also remember most 90s non-web software also using flat files. Even enterprise stuff, even when they had centralized storage in a file server. Sometimes they had databases but those were also accessed directly in the disk, sqlite-style. I remember seeing Clipper, FoxPro and MS Access being used in this manner.

After Perl I graduated to doing web stuff with a Microsoft Access (!) file stored in the disk alongside my .ASP scripts, exactly like one would do with sqlite today. It was quite performant.

I wonder if your "internet mentor" was the same as mine: Matt from Matt's Script Archive @ http://www.scriptarchive.com.

I remember scriptarchive, which I’ve browsed quite a lot, but it wasnt’t Matt. It was a german guy who had a similiar script collection, some of which he sold online. He reviewed and even tested my scripts and helped me along when I got stuck on incorrect cgi-bin file permissions or syntax errors and stuff like that when I was just learning things. Invaluable.

Ha, at that time I ran a website in Germany where I published my own Perl scripts for web forums, guestbooks, counters etc. (all based on flat files) and I helped other people getting started with web programming and "hacking" as well. I know there were a few such sites at the time but mine was quite popular in Germany. We had a really nice community at the time, I still fondly remember all the discussions and the general "small world" feeling the Internet had back then. I guess if you tried to build an online community like that today it would get overrun by trolls and spambots in no time. Those were the good old days.

I started with php and msql back in ... 1996. Then in 98 took a job and much was perl. This was a web agency, and there was one client running Oracle on a sparc (IIRC), and some folks were tested out 'asp' and using MSSQL 6.5 (again IIRC - 7 wasn't out until later). But for those of us using perl... we were forced in to flat files and/or dbm files for our data storage needs.

I tried to ask for msql or mysql, but were told 'no', that they were 'too heavy' for what we needed, so the folks doing perl were pushed back to the dark ages. We also weren't allowed to use 'shtml' - basic server side processing for things like 'include' to include common footers. Whenever we needed to make a footer change we had to write multiple search/replace scripts across dozens of client sites. The new 'asp' folks lauded this over us for a while with "look how advanced asp and Microsoft is - MS really gets the web". I showed what I'd been doing with PHP for 2-3 years at that point, with includes and more. But "well, that's not really powerful enough". Kept moving the goalposts.

tldr - there were many options for more advanced stuff than flat files back in the earliest web days, but often people were hamstrung by short sighted tech decisions made by people who were not responsible for actually delivering the work. has much changed in the past 25+ years? ;)

Same. Around then, I requested MySQL and was told no for the same reasons you were. So I implemented my database as flat files and proceeded to use up all the inodes a few weeks later on a large call center server used for interviewing and data collection.

I received a panicked call from the admin that turned down my request. He wasn’t happy with me but understood the role he played in creating an expensive disaster.

Plenty of learning to go around in that experience :)

Anyone here remember CuteNews? That was my favourite flatfile CMS back in the day.

Yep! Pretty popular in late 90s to mid 2000s from what I remember?

Same here. The first real dynamic website I created used flat files and PHP, because that’s what I learned from friends online. Then shortly afterwards I taught myself how to use MySQL.

I don’t use MySQL or PHP for anything nowadays, but was extremely useful to learn in the early 2000s.

Ah, I miss those days! Writing a guestbook in PHP was how many got started back then!