This is what im looking for: A system where it can pull the content from a database, apply a template and show the html page. Now i can use a CMS for this, but generally they are too complicated and dont give me the flexibiility i need (I dont want WYSIWYG editors, or all things designed to make it easier) For any blogger users, their custom templating is EXACTLY what i want.
One way you can do this is by using php files instead of html. (I think you can also use html files and use SSI includes but it is probably alot easier with php) Just write a php include statement pulling the content from the database. Dreamweaver has some nice features to help setup pages like this. Of course if you also want URLs, title, keyword and description meta tags pulled from a database it gets a little more complicated. The other approach would be to start with a basic CMS like Mambo or Wordpress and disable or comment out all the features you don't need.
You could check out smarty, as seen above, or you could check out Wordpress. If you're mainly looking for a system that will let you pull content and then use a themeing system, this may be a good solution for you. I use smarty on a couple of my sites, but they aren't as content specific as the other sites I use Wordpress for. Wordpress has a lot of flexibility, so it's at least worth looking into as a solution for your needs. Best of luck.
yeah... but i do have programmiong experience and a CMS will mess about with my code and make it horrible.. Smarty is what i want
I would recommend the Joomla CMS. It will allow you to grow if you need to and its pretty easy to use.
For what you are looking for you are hard pressed to beat pagesetter/postnuke. The Database, the php code and the templating are completely isolated.