A Lot of Techrights is Built on Perl
Like The Register MS, the "new Techrights" (reborn with SSG) is built on lots of Perl.
Perl is not a dead language. One could argue that Perl is dying (outsourcing to Microsoft GitHub is always bad optics), but it's still around and when/if it works, it'll work well for a very long time.
Perl also runs the sister site.
I first became more aware of Perl when I started my Ph.D. at age 21. A colleague called Mike Rogers made a neat system for managing conferences online. He used Perl to make it and I was asked to look into it, as not many people (even back then) could comprehend Perl, let alone add Perl code/modify existing code. Mike was already busy as a postdoc; he was about 5 years my senior.
The basic idea that "old" things (they say old, not "mature" or "stable" or "battle-tested") are unfit for purpose is misguided. Many of us still use C in the same way we used C back in the 1990s and Bash scripts from the 1980s ought to work OK with recent versions of Bash (or dash or whatever non-GNU binaries exist).
The "new Techrights" needs something stable and predictable. Python you say? Ha! Good luck migrating from 2.x to 3.x. The same goes for PHP. When we say "migrating" we don't mean copying files or upgrading packages; it typically means rewriting lots of existing code, then properly testing it.
Software is moving way too fast; I'd not be the first to assert that, as it's often mentioned in the debates about software patenting and costs associated with keeping existing systems running for a very long time (like decades).
After migrating everything from the US to the UK we want something that is robust, cheap (to keep running), and very long-lasting. Unlike WordPress with its mountain of dependencies. █