it's not as simple as copying homepage.php to homepagenew.php, hacking on it until it works, and then renaming homepagenew.php to homepage.php
It actually can be easier than that if the only reason PHP is involved is for templating and you don't want CGI. (NB: This is admittedly contra "the mildly dynamic website" described in the article).
If you're Alice of alice.example.com, then you open up your local copy of e.g. https://alice.example.com/sop/pub.app.htm, proceed to start "hacking on it until it works", then rsync the output.