well i came up with a work around a few days after i orginally posted, its similar to what you posted but a bit better as you get the header/footer pages which change if they are logged in or not etc. also my work around lets you use the add pages edit page feature in the admin pannel too.

so for example this is my links page.

open notepad and paste the following code into it....save it as links.php or whatever
Code:
<?php
session_start();
include("include/config.php");
include("include/function.php");
STemplate::display('header.tpl');
include("pages/links.html");
STemplate::display('footer.tpl');
?>
upload the links.php and it will display your site normally with included html.

just change the include("pages/links.html"); line to be the page you have created.