The informal hn hacker book project, http://hn-books.com, is ran completely as a static site. It manages reviews on hundreds of different startup books and tools. It has book lists, allows sorting and multiple filtering by various options. It allows you to create and share lists of books with your friends (http://www.hn-books.com/AnswerQuestion.htm) You can comment on reviews (through LiveFyre) and it even has a "Drop Dead" calculator where you can configure a startup business model and it will display a countdown until you run out of money (http://hn-books.com/EZ-Business-Model.htm) Once you create your biz model, it "remembers" it and you can share your models with other people simply by passing them an URL.
Not trying to plug the site, just wanted to show how much you can really do if you put your mind to it. The entire hn-books site fits on a simple directory and requires zero setup. It just sits there, making money. No upgrades, no patches, no dickering around with hosting providers, no worry about load times. No user database or sensitive data to worry about securing. It. Just. Works.
Quite honestly, if I had my way this is how I'd do all my projects. It required a completely new way of thinking through the app, but to me the trade-offs are easily worth it.
EDIT: It wasn't all roses, though. Biggest problem I had (have) is sorting speed in JS with the big book lists. I'm sure there's a way to optimize that, but I never got around to nailing it down.
Yes, once the page is loaded, everything it needs to run is there. There are no further AJAX calls or loads.
You know, I've seen some services lately that allow you to tag random data and put it in the cloud. As long as you were clear that all user data was public, you could easily use one of those for user-related storage.
And now, of course, there's WebStorage, available on all modern browsers.
I'm looking forward to a future micro-project that incorporates all of that stuff. Should be a hoot. If I had my druthers, I'd try to pick something that everybody would think would be impossible, then do it.
Not trying to plug the site, just wanted to show how much you can really do if you put your mind to it. The entire hn-books site fits on a simple directory and requires zero setup. It just sits there, making money. No upgrades, no patches, no dickering around with hosting providers, no worry about load times. No user database or sensitive data to worry about securing. It. Just. Works.
Quite honestly, if I had my way this is how I'd do all my projects. It required a completely new way of thinking through the app, but to me the trade-offs are easily worth it.
EDIT: It wasn't all roses, though. Biggest problem I had (have) is sorting speed in JS with the big book lists. I'm sure there's a way to optimize that, but I never got around to nailing it down.