Stab: Thanks for the pointer to PEAR, although I wasn't able to find a whole lot of information out there regarding DB.php (but reading through the source was quite illuminating). If I end up settling on PHP-Nuke, I'll probably end up doing a rewrite of the DB access code using that. (The main thing driving me here is that I already have applications making productive use of PostgreSQL; I can't see a good reason to run both it and MySQL just because of a single software dependancy.)
gstein: Zope's footprint didn't seem too bad for a complete application backend (comparing it to, say, Allaire's ColdFusion, or InterShop's app server engine, or even MudOS/DGD/ldmud *grin*), and it provides a very nice framework to do development in, but I can't really justify the resources for a single project. So, no Squishdot for me. ;-)
Debian woody: Unsatisfied with the disgustingly high degree of stability shown by my potato machine, I finally got around to updating to woody. The upgrade went smoothly, and I'm generally happy with the result. Mind you, I don't use that box on a day-to-day basis, so I probably should have just left it alone. ;-)
More later.