Working with a new design client

Hi all, I have a new client (a design company). They have never developed a dynamic website at all and do all their HTML editing using Dreamweaver. When I build sites, I am used to using a class for pages. Many of the pages in this site are totally static except for a few elements (Bread Crumb, Nav Bar, etc.). So I am not sure if this method is the best way to go... My big concern is that I am going to totally screw them up if they want to edit some details on a page, they are going to have to go in and mess with the HTML that gets passed to the drawPage() function. Maybe there is a better way to handle this? I have never used Smarty, which I understand might be a big help in these situations. One concern of mine is that I have a tight budget on this project and don't want to spend a lot of time learning a new system unless I have to. Thanks for any advice, Charles