Jim – cheers for the comment

Forgive me if I’ve got this wrong but I think you’ve misunderstood what I’m suggesting. The idea isn’t to hold data outside the page, but to hold a file which holds the *data shape* which refers to the existing data/html *on* the page. Sorry if I didn’t make this clear!

The content in the file *could* be included somehow in the page, but the reality is that more than one page is likely to be represented in the same template shape – so it is better, like CSS, to hold this externally.

Make more sense?