Mary Linville

Double-check:

When you created the static page, did you check the box next to “Allow Comments”?

Did you change the default template at all?

Can you share a link to your feed(s)?

Okay, I think I see what you’re trying to accomplish. I don’t know how helpful I can be.
Are you looking for this to be mostly automatic, or since it will be mostly static will you be doing it by hand?
Also, how are you separating posts for different authors – are they all going to use one blog, or are you using one of the multi-blog solutions?

“Did you….”
I’d say no — the error that occurs is a 404.

Okay, so you don’t want any posts to appear on the front page? I think you need to make it more clear. ??

Plenty, eh?

I’m prejudiced against w’s.

“PHP scripts are pre-compiled, so comments in the code only slow down their execution the first time they are run.”
Uh, sorry but, that makes no sense whatsoever. WordPress doesn’t output static files (by default, there is a plugin somewhere, I think), so EVERY time is “first time”.
“I’m pointing out a problem with WordPress.”
Granted. (I do think some here are a little twitchy to smack down trolls, very protective of their favourite software. ) Just remember WordPress’ beginnings: this wasn’t written from scratch, it used to be “b2” or “cafelog”. As they’ve gone along, they’ve cleaned up code — they only just took away all references to “b2” in the filenames.

list_cats() and get_archives() produce a list (the bullets) because they are supposed to.
If you don’t want the bullets there, its a simple matter of styling the list with CSS.
https://w3schools.com/css/pr_list-style-type.asp
Example:
ul {
list-style-type: none;
}

You might also want to fiddle with margins/padding.
https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_list.asp
As far as posts_nav_link() goes, I believe it needs to be outside the loop.

“by serving up 30 posts on the front page?”
Um, up to 30 days, not posts. Looks like Beel’s suggestion should work nicely, I think?

Find the MySQL databases link in CPANEL, then near the bottom of that page there’s a link to manage your databases through phpMyAdmin.

“What I would like is one for
Current Month”
That exact option is not available; yet, anyway.
“Of course, if there are no posts for the month yet, have it default back to the posts for the previous months.”
Um, 30 days then?

What I found was this.
https://wiki.www.ads-software.com/User%20Levels
Compare it with your settings, maybe fiddle with them a bit if need be?

404 not found, so I guess you un-installed/moved it.

https://www.ads-software.com/support/3/14234