I have seen quite a few hand coded sites that are CMS controlled. It seems that CMS’s fall into two categories. The ones that are purely plug and play and you basically build your site based on their modules that exist already. And there are ones that give you the functions but no pre-existing code so you hand code each of the elements that go in to your site. There are pros and cons to each but I tend to lean toward the one the produces the cleanest markup because in the end that is all that matters. I don’t care if it takes the template programmers a few extra days/hours to code the templates if in the end the thousands of users that visit the site every day are getting a light and accessible page.

The breadcrumb method I think totally works. It’s easy at a 10 second glance to see exactly where you are and the related areas. I prefer this method over > the > typical > way.