I've just read "Building a Complete Website using the Template Toolkit". It's incredibly complex and can be very intimidating at first; however, I reread it, and it does seem backwards. But I think that what they said about ttree was right on. To me, it all boils down to the proper use of options. For instance, you have one or two templates---Using the pre_process and post_process options enables you specify one or more templates to be added to the top or bottom of the page templates automatically. Then your contents, stored in a separate html file can be added, copied, or ignored as needed. At least that's how I read it and understood it. And there's hundreds of options. Keep the man pages open for this one.