[romeoblade]

Server Side Includes was probably the only thing that came close. While not actual templating, it did serve me well for code reusability and being able to make updates in one place. I made heavy use of them, even after discovering php3. It wasn't until I discovered smarty that I stopped using them. I miss those simpler days.

[fergie]

SSIs are actually still a thing, but they are webserver dependent- so if you are hosting your static pages on say S3 then they wont work.