[SCENARIO] You just started a new job and your boss wants you to build a new site including custom flash, PHP, and CSS. The current site is embedded in a CMS. You aren't able to access the back-end of the website to see how the current CMS utilizes the code because you don't have administrative access. Will this task be simple, moderate, or much more time consuming than if you had access?
without full root server access I would NEVER accept such as job for no money in the world ! tell ur boss to do it himself after he gets desperate and just seconds before he shoots himself - offer him help that is the only moment in life he may be mature to give all / pay all as needed to do the most efficient job all - of nothing at all
I'd say time-consuming if your new site must work with this CMS. However if you're simply redoing everything from scratch entirely, and you know how to do all those things listed above, then it's not so bad-- imitation is easy enough. But I suspect you meant "has to work with this current, mysterious black box of a CMS". In which case, I'd first see what the original site builder did (assuming s/he also couldn't see into the black box) in order to work with it. That would at least tell you how difficult the job would be.