That's cool.
Some of my static pages pull some information from the database (i.e. check to see if they are logged in to the forum or show a poll from the forum*), but that information is not required for the static part of the site. Its just a nice enhancement.
(*I'm creating a universal login to the website using WWF to store the users.)
With the code you gave above, I should also be able to tell it to not use certain includes or code that requires access to the database.
I think I am going to use that in all the code I write from now on. I'd rather have them see my static pages and not get a 500 error.
Error checking is a good thing! 
Edited by wistex