Yeah I had those situations too. Problem is even more challenging since I'm an freelancer. Which means that I usually have only few days to finish some project (alto projects/code base is probably smaller).

The last project (of that type) I did, was implementing on-hold function to some site/url dir/listing web application.

So I tougth, I just put another field in the table (on_hold) make it in form of check box in the entry form, change the SQL of search/browse functions (add something like 'AND on_hold != 1') and that's it. Yeah right!

First thing I saw is ~ 40 adminXX.cgi files. Same story about templating (self made), no strict, all HTML between the code, same thing/function is 5 places/files ...

On the other hand, if it was written better, we probably wouldn't have so much work to do :)