This article describes a way of using Plone to create a completely static web site (without login capability), then downloading all the pages and serving them out using a normal web server.

The reason I did this was that I wanted to be able to support Plone for people and organizations I know to create their own simple web sites without having to be HTML coders.  However, the Plone server seems resource intensive under light load (I can only imagine it under heavy load).  Also, Plone plus Zope seems rather complicated, which makes me concerned about possible security holes in all that code.

Admittedly, one could throw better hardware at the problem, but I prefer to use resources efficiently and find solutions which can be run inexpensively.

Caching is another alternative.  I have tried to set up Squid in front of Plone and configure it so that not-logged-in users see the Squid cache, while logged-in users are passed through to Plone.  I never got this to work correctly, and the browser's cached state was adding another layer of brokenness.  Also, Zope needs to be run where it can be seen by the web server and potentially be attacked.  Eventually I decided that it suited my goals better to just crawl the pages and serve them out with a web server.

Therefore, let's use Plone to create a completely static web site (without login capability), then download all the pages and serve them out using a normal web server.

Turning off the Dynamic Parts of a Plone Site

Start with a newly created Plone site.

Remove unnecessary portlets:

ZMI, top of site, Properties tab:
left_slots: delete here/portlet_login/macros/portlet
(also portlet_recent and portlet_related if you want to)
right_slots: delete portlets: review, news, events, calendar

remove some folders from navigation:

go to mysite/Members in Plone, click Properties tab
check Exclude from Navigation
push Save
optionally do the same for News and Events folders

if you have News you may want an invisible folder to store news items:

create News Items folder at top level
click Properties, exclude from navigation 

TODO:
recode contact form to use Dreamhost's thing

remove "join" option:
    ZMI mysite
    Security tab
    uncheck "Acquire?" on "Add portal member"
    Save Changes
(or... go to mysite/portal_registration and make join action not
visible... but sneaky users can still get in.)

remove "log in" action:
    ZMI mysite/portal_membership
    Actions tab
    find "login" action
    clear Visible checkbox
    Save Changes

remove links: sendto, print, contact:
    ZMI mysite/portal_actions
    Actions tab
    uncheck "Visible" for the desired things
    Save Changes

remove Search box:
    ZMI mysite/portal_skins/plone_templates/global_searchbox
    click Customize, create in custom folder
    edit in custom folder
    comment out the entire contents of the outer div tag.

change banner:

ZMI mysite/portal_skins/custom
add object of type Image: id = logo.jpg
browse for a JPEG file and add it

change copyright notice:

ZMI mysite/portal_skins/plone_templates/footer
Customize into custom folder
Edit and change to the desired copyright notice

trim down Plone compliance icons:

(This is not related to making the site static, it just reduces visual clutter.)
ZMI mysite/portal_skins/plone_templates/colophon
Customize
Remove everything except the Plone Powered icon ... or to taste.

alter or remove the byline:

ZMI mysite/portal_skins/plone_content/document_byline
Customize
Comment out contents of the outer div - or alter