It's a neat way of working - but it does leave you with limited functionality.
I've gone entirely the other way - my blog is http://andrewducker.livejournal.com - everything is database driven and there's no static content at all.
Which, I'm sure, is slower - but it also makes updates to the layout (for instance) faster, as you're not having to regenerate the entire site. Plus, of course, you get huge wodges of functionality, like the commenting system (which is the best I've seen anywwhere).
LiveJournal's hardly a fair counterpoint -- it's a massive site with a complex, highly-tuned architecture, designed to be as fast as a dynamic, database-backed site can be:
Most people who install Wordpress are doing it on a modest shared server or VPS. The point of the article is the benefits of baking and serving static files for these folks are greater than the potential risks of having a single Apache + mod_php + MySQL instance keel over under heavy load.
That was kinda my point. The middle ground doesn't hold much benefit (as far as I can see) - you have to manage the complexity yourself and it's risky. I'd either want a simple system that's not goint to blow up on me (i.e. static files) or I want a fully functional system that's run by someone else (i.e. livejournal).
I recently migrated my WP.org blog to WP.com because of this. Now I feel safe.
Nevertheless, I publish my personal site using Emacs' Org-mode and if I were to start a blog from scratch I would use something like org-mode or jekyll.
Probably because I need the feeling of being in control of my data.
I've gone entirely the other way - my blog is http://andrewducker.livejournal.com - everything is database driven and there's no static content at all.
Which, I'm sure, is slower - but it also makes updates to the layout (for instance) faster, as you're not having to regenerate the entire site. Plus, of course, you get huge wodges of functionality, like the commenting system (which is the best I've seen anywwhere).