Well, Brother Dep, you are probably between a rock and a hard place. I am going through a very similar process where I am, redesigning an organisation's internet and intranet web sites. Each has 200 plus pages, generally "static" - with the exception that maintenance has become a nightmare.

I will be using EmbPerl::Object. This allows several things - a site to be built from reusable components (standard headers and footers, navigation bars and all that), and the seperation of perl code from html code. The HTML stuff still looks like HTML stuff, and the web writing people are stull happy. The perl code uses EmbPerl - which makes use of CGI.pm under its own covers.

Now, that does not solve your immediate problems, which as I see it is summed up by:

to quote the senior developer, "I forget how it works, but as long as it works, thats the way it is."

It doesn't matter what the develoment environment is - everythime I hear that, I have visions of huge impending disasters. Think Pompei with smoke at the top of Mount Vesuvius. Think S.S. Titanic and "hey, there are a few icebergs around tonight". Think General Custer and "I can't see any indians here".

You may be able to propose a transition from the current methods, to some form of templating - it really doesn't matter which one, they all are much better than your current situation. Then, when a particular page / module needs to be modified, convert it to the new architecture.

Good luck - I think you are going to need it.

Update: Thanks, deprecated, for reminding me how to spell Pompei.