You can set up a caching proxy server as the front end, and have it cache your dynamic as well as your static content. This does require setting correct headers. There are more details in the apache mod_perl guide, check out http://perl.apache.org/guide/

Also you can stack apache handlers so that all your HTML documents get sent through a ssi like process, that wraps the headers and menus around it. That is what I am doing for makeyourbanner.com, because I want to escape the mess that I made by implementing the whole thing with CGI.pm. CGI.pm is a WONDERFUL tool, but I'm not sure about the wisdom of writing large HTML with it; it's a mess, because you have to visualize both the HTML and the perl at the same time. With a wrapper, you get the same effect, only writing the menu once, but you don't have think about more than one language at a time. Very handy if different people are handling different parts of the site...