In reply to:
We are basically at the mercy of our hosting companies so keeping the system as undemanding of resources and requirements as possible is going to be a benefit to us.
Exactly! I think optimizing the code with that in mind, and adding great new features for everyone (which are not resource-hogers) would benefit everyone. I agree that templates are a good IDEA but if it means totally rewriting the scripts I think they are too demanding for the development and would reduce the quality and standard of W3T.