You may be onto something here. A better shot of the code is:

sub LoadTemplate { 
    my($file) = @_;
    my($thebase) = ($file =~ /(.*)\/[^\/]+/);
    my($html,$html2);
    
    if (!-e $file){
       $thebase =~ s/\/[^\/]+$/\/default/;
    }
    if (-e "$thebase/templates.old"){
        open(TEMPLATE, "$file")||&DieNice("Opening: $file -- $!");
        my $html = join('',<TEMPLATE>);
        close(TEMPLATE);
    }else{
        open(TEMPLATE, "$thebase/master.htm")||&DieNice("Opening $theb
+ase/master.htm: $!");
        $html = join('',<TEMPLATE>);
        close(TEMPLATE);
        open(TEMPLATE, "$file")||&DieNice("Opening: $file -- $!");
        $html2 = join('',<TEMPLATE>);
        close(TEMPLATE);
        $html =~ s/!INSERT!/$html2/i;
    }
[download]

Still trying to figure out how to fix it.