Agreed about the comments. But as far as me being able to simply the code a great dead by using templates I don't understand. If you look at what the functions (banner, menu, footer, etc..) do you will see this (I took menu as an example because it is the simpliest):

sub menu {

  my $self = shift;
  my $template = $self->load_tmpl('menu.tmpl',
        cache => 1
        );

  return $template->output;

}
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Those function calls are there because every page has a banner, a footer, a menu. The templates have various variables in them so that each banner, footer, whatever is customized depending where you are in the site. Are you really talking about something else? Any I using templates wrong?!?