does anybody here use kHTTPd with mod_perl?
http://www.fenrus.demon.nl/

under mod_perl, each normal httpd request (image files etc) will use a mysql connection, although it doesn't do anything, but really waste connections and memory.
kHTTPd handles only static web-pages only, it will take care of all image/html/zip files and pass .pl/.cgi files to apache mod_perl, so it may save some resources if your forum has lots of images.