Yeah, but I don't think I'll go in that direction.
What I'm trying to do is to set up a web site (and associated applications) that in the near future I can turn over to someone who has few, if any, technical skills -- but who would be able to maintain it. This means avoiding any special "local mods" or source changes, etc.
How realistic a goal this is remains to be seen, but so far I seem to be succeeding pretty well. In part this is because Zenphoto is quite easy to explain, understand, and use from the admin interface (with a little helpful "how to" documentation). In fact, it's largely Zenphoto that's allowed me to provide some really impressive capabilities for content management, but without anything beyond basic configuration of the CMS.
So one of my basic principles in all this is "Avoid any custom programming". In fact, "Avoid anything that even looks like programming". There's only so far you can go and conform to those principles :-). There are some trade-offs, but at this point it's coming out well.