WordPress
WordPress is a very popular blogging CMS used by many commercial and non-commercial entities. Although primarily used as a blogging platform, WordPress can also be used to create a simple site - the software is actually described as "web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog" on the homepage of WordPress.org.
WordPress Blog on the WordPress.org site
Installation Requirements
WordPress requires a web server running:
- PHP 5.2.4 or greater
- MySQL 5.0 or greater
You can also run a free basic WordPress blog hosted at WordPress.com .
Ease of installation/use
Using a hosted solution via WordPress.com or another site, you can have a blog set up in seconds. If you plan to host the site yourself (pretty much mandatory if you intend to use WordPress to create a "proper" site on its own domain), the installation procedure is comparable to MediaWiki. You will need to have administrator access to your MySQL database so that you can create a new database instance specifically for WordPress.
WordPress excels as a content creation tool, providing an easy to use editor that can be displayed full screen to remove any distraction or worry caused by the "technical" process of creating pages. Many themes are available free on the web, and these are easy to install, so even those without html or css skills can get a nicely presented site relatively easily. The blogging software focus of WordPress would make it difficult to create anything more than a simple site with basic one-tier navigation though if you were not already technically proficient (though among the literally thousands of WordPress plugins there are some attempts to approach a more multi level categorization system - this reviewer did not have time to explore these options).
IA Considerations
Too many options can cause problems. The plethora of themes, add-ons, plugins, etc available to the WordPress user can complicate things. I am sure we have all seen our share of hideously unstructured and aesthetically woeful blogs in our time. Still, it does not have to be this way. A good information architect combined with a good graphic designer can create a stunning and IA respectable site using this software. This list of 20 Great Corporate Websites made with WordPress will give you an idea of what is possible.
As has been mentioned, "tagging" is a defining characteristic of blog-focused CMS's. Unlike traditional classification systems, this method of categorization does not use a controlled vocabulary, nor a heirarchical or faceted approach to classification (though it might be argued that very careful tagging could indeed create a workable faceted system). Tag lists do have a tendency to become a bit long over time, so this does become an issue. However, the typical user of your site is probably an infrequent vistor that would not build up familiarity (Morville & Rosenfeld, 2007, p. 214) enough with your site to make use of a more formal system. Blogs do not typically allow for collaborative categorization (Morville & Rosenfeld, 2007, p. 77) by users of the site, and WordPress out of the box at least is no exception.