Best method to retrieve site settings

Hi guys,
I have another website to develope, this time the customer is quite demanding, he wants to be able to change everything from a webpage (all site sizes, fonts, paddings, spaces, colors, and the main information, the lot) this means all this settings will be in the database, I tried to suggest that this settings can also be in a asp, xml, css file, but he doesn't want any of that, he wants to login, go to admin and change the lot from there.

This means ofcourse, allot of database operations just to retreive all these settings, the way this is usually handled is on top of the header or some sort of commom page that gets all these, and this will be called time after time as a user browses around.

I won't be using application variables, I was thinking on using cookies to store all this data as it is retrieved the first time, then set a time stamp with the settings change condition, so if a user gets the settings first time, on all other pages he won't be calling the db again to get the settings, unless the admin changed anything, in which case the change condition will be set, and the user will re-get the settings again from the database. Is this viable at all?

I don't want the users to call the database to retrieve and fill hundres of variables for each page call.

What other methods are there to ease the load on this kind of thing?

Well, there's reasons why common web technologies/techniques are used the way they are that are due to limitations of the web and of existing browser technologies.
If your client insists on changing the way the web works, it may be time to walk as neither he nor you will be happy with the result. It won't be a either/or is happy situation. He'll always blame you for not  adding some capability that he figures is essential 2 years from now.

I think you'll find that your options will be realistically limited to page-level CMS and/or site-level template based solutions. You might also want to google for "stylesheet generator".

I find that clients like InnovaStudio's WebCMS - http://www.innovastudio.com/webcms.asp
It's template-based and not as admin heavy/confusing as something like phpNuke. I've set it up for a couple of clients to allow editing of the templates.

FrontPage may be a good solution. Sooner or later they'll get stuck or break something regardless of how they edit. You can always point them to a FP newsgroup or site instead of having to drop everything and work late "fixing" your code for a client who sounds like a pisser.

Thx guys,
The CSS part I figured, it will be coming from the DB and I will give him a textarea to edit it, after all this will just be another column in the DB nothing more.
All sitewide presentation settings will coming from this DB retrieved CSS column.

I will have a table just for site settings, but I don't want this table to be hit and called upon on every page, as anyone actually done anything similar to my cookie based solution? I mean in theory it should work, this table is read on first page view, all settings go to the user cookie, he then uses these settings from the cookie as he goes from page to page, unless a change to the settings is made, in which case the user has to re-get all settings again from DB, as I said in theory should work.
As for people being cookiephobic, well, I see no harm coming from cookies, there's the spy and tracking that can be done, users just have to clear their cookies at the end of each day, I see more harm coming from Javascript than from cookies, I will have a message saying [cookies needed...].

He wants his new page to be modular, so he can call me later to add more functionality to it, he's not selling anything from it, it's for his church somewhere in west London, but he wants all info to be edited online, no more FTPing stuff around, and it be user based, to allow user discussion.

I've done this guy last page 2/3 years ago, and I'm charging him this time £800 for this new page, is this a realistic price for the ammount of work?

And please also comment on the viability of my settings cache (cookie) idea?

At the end of the day, he's paying you.  You have a responsibility as the profesional to alert him to the setbacks of the solution he wants, but if he still insists then do it.  As long as you explained the setbacks properly (and I recommend doing a paper copy so you can point him back to it if it causes problems).

If he finds out he doesn't like it when you do it, more work for you!