I've never worked with mysql, apache, or perl before. (actually, anything to do with programming or anything of that sort)
I downloaded and installed everything I needed. Got it all working together and followed instructions I found in these threads (which were an invaluable resource)
One snag I hit was that .pl would always load as text documents. I changed them all to .cgi (and fixed the scripts to point to .cgi) and it worked.
One problem I hit with changing it all to .cgi was I couldn't get oekaki to work properly. I redid everything on another computer I had (same installs, same configuring) and it ran the .pl files fine. Oekaki worked also.
I'm not concerned since I did get it work fine on another computer, I would just like to know why .pl didn't work while .cgi did.
I'm running this on my own computer (windows) if that helps. Also, I don't plan on putting this on the net so that's why I didn't use a web hosting service.
install linux, problem solved
Most likely because Apache isn't set to use cgi-handler for .pl files on the one machine.