Unfortunately, recreating the functionality of a Templating system like Mason, HTML::Template, or Template Toolkit, most likely will take you more time than getting that sysadmin to install these modules, that and all 3 solutions are very stable and well tested.

Not that either of the other systems are not excellent choices, but I prefer Template Toolkit. IMO it is very easy to get up and running and will work with *nix, Win32, Apache, and IIS. Take a look a the tutorial .

If it helps the install for Template Toolkit takes less than 5 minutes

FWIW my company has just completed a DB driven dynamic website with TT in about 50 lines of perl code.

grep

grep> cd /pub grep> more beer