You don't need to go back to the drawing board, just set the global_vars option as quoted above:
If you want your variables to be global you can use global_vars option to new() described below.
From the docs:
global_vars - normally variables declared outside a loop are not available inside a loop. This option makes <TMPL_VAR>s like global variables in Perl - they have unlimited scope. This option also affects <TMPL_IF> and <TMPL_UNLESS>.

In reply to Re^5: IF in a loop using HTML::Template by saberworks
in thread IF in a loop using HTML::Template by Anonymous Monk

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