Wordpress Research

Wordpress University

Wordpress for Dummmies book
-- It looks to be out of print, however.

Using a Static Homepage for Your Wordpress Blog
tutorial on creating a copy of a theme and making it into a static page (with screenshots)

How To: Using WordPress as a Static Site
basic instructions on what tags and php files to remove from a Wordpress theme.

Add a favicon to your Wordpress Blog
http://wphackr.com/add-favicon-to-wordpress-blog

Turn Off Wordpress Comments
If using pages, comment out the code that displays/enables comments

WP-CMS Plugin for Wordpress
WP-CMS is a plugin for Wordpress that changes the functionality of the Wordpress admin backend to act more like a CMS. The blog functionality becomes optional and the focus is on writing pages to make Wordpress as user friendly for you and your clients as possible.

WordPress versions 2.1+ now have the static homepage feature built into the software. Go to “options” –> “reading” and you’ll see where to set your static front page.