As I see it, your problem is including the header, footer, menus, etc. in the site. Unlike the main content, these are unlikely to change, and when they do, will change across all the pages that use them instead of page by page. Therefore, all you need is something that merges the different parts, rather than interpreting them as well. Take a look at Server Side Include. SSI is capable of doing a limited selection of dynamic content, like printing date / time, and for anything more complicated (your content), you can include a Perl script - or a file generated by a Perl script (best choice if the content is viewed many times for every edit).