Thanks for all your replies. Rather than answering each individually, I've posted this and /msg'd relevant people:

drfrog - i don't think there would be many more issues than existing situation - ie, clients have no reason to piss around (it wouldn't be to their advantage)

joealba - thanks, great input - technically, I will be the only one in *most* cases. I think, for now, static page sets will make more sense, but as certain features get added, I'll need to rethink this.

moodster - I was thinking of using SSI to call scripts, so no real limitations on content. Perhaps the question should have been amended to "...build multiple static page sets or use CGI..'

mischief - It's perl in the sense that I'm using Perl to generate the pages,whatever method's used. I could have built 3 sets of scripts to test each of the three scenarios and benchmarked them, but since I know there are a lot of e-commerce/developer types here, I thought I'd ask around first. A bit like asking, "What's the best way to send an e-mail?" That's not a Perl question, but if you've ever done it in Perl, you'll understand what the question is asking :)

JPaul - Thank You! Just the sort of feedback I was looking for. Very useful.

perrin - sorry, should have expanded - SSI calls perl scripts, state maintained using a cookie.

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I think for now, continuing to create template based static pages will be the way to go (also means less work for me), but for the long term, I'll need to probably go the whole hog to a dynamic template driven system that benchmarks a page when designed so the shop owner can be warned if it contains too much custom content.

Oh joy, how I love the SME^* market :)

Thanks again all for your comments.

cLive ;-)

^* - Small/Medium sized Enterprises