VDE

Hi all, We are building a site on a server which is set up in a way I've never come across before. They use what they call a VDE(VirtualDomainEnvironment). Has anyone come across this before? Its unlike anything I've ever seen, and the support is very slim unless one is using perl. From what I can gather, scripts must go in a directory called /cgi. First line needs to be a shebang like in perl, but pointing to /usr/local/bin/php. What the file extension needs to be is anyone's guess. I've tried putting a test file with every extension I could think of (.php, .php3,.phtml and even .html) and I get a 404 when I try to access it. Has anyone ever worked in this kind of environment? Is anyone, perchance, building sites that are hosted by xo.com? I'm really stuck and the faq's all presume the scripting is being done in perl? Any help or hints gratefully received.