The versitility of the old PHPWS was the issue that sold - it could be fitted to most any punter.  Now I find that for properties I need a new system (OK not that many punters remain for that particular product but none the less its a bind to have it missing from a stable you had prieviously go on with so well successfully) and half of the gimmicky but cute plugins that once went down so well are gone with precious few replacements on the horizon.
Granted HTML is in at the moment and so my time is limited (longer development times for HTML sites) - but maybe I need to mess with a few dynamic alternatives or else I may wind up struggling to find new products against a deadline,  not the way to have to do it believe me.
Hopefully the market has simply matured enough for "Dynamic" to no longer be the catch-all buzzword it once was and we will start to see punters selecting technology based on their requirements after due consideration rather than on what "sounds good". 
I have lost count of the people who needed no discussion - they wanted dynamic so they could do their own updates and then turned around and dumped boatloads of documents (often treeware) on me for me to "drop into the site when you have time in the next few days" six months post completion.  Then they acted hurt and surprised when (once through laughing) I declined to scan, OCR and enter said documents into the site that they wanted cut-price as they were going to do all the updates themselves.  No they didn't want to be reminded how the system worked - they just didn't want to be bothered.  Well updates can indeed be done for you - but not on THAT basis.
Generally such content gets dropped into the bin as the worst manifestation of mission creep you are likely to get where the punter assumes that since you did his/her website you will also update it free and forever, design his office stationery and then fix his dodgy, cheap and cheerful office networking because you "know about computers" all as part of the original project that was a five page dynamic website.
Hey, I have been known to think things over in the past but, as someone who uses a brain, do you really think that this qualifies or motivates me to do your wife's brain surgery?
Go pay someone else and we'll all be happier - especially the wife.