I am not aware of any way (back then) to run mod_perl, which was powerful enough to facilitate developing Apache modules directly in Perl, safely in the shared hosting environments that most people used in the 2000s. If you wanted Perl, your options were either classic CGI, with the overhead of script recompilation and a new perl process spawned for each individual HTTP request (even if initially handled by the same Apache process), or paying up for a dedicated server/VPS just so you could run mod_perl.
How the Perl community thought this was an acceptable state of affairs, especially given how big of a driver webdev had been of Perl uptake during the .com bubble, when Perl was affectionately called the "duct tape of the web," and how they just sat by and let PHP eat their lunch, I'll never understand. But the attitude of the Perl community then was this mix of old-school UNIX/USENET "RTFM" culture and a dubious sense of cockiness (instilled through catechisms and catchphrases, like JAPH), so they weren't going to bend-over backwards to attract and accommodate new blood, expecting Muhammad to come to the mountain.