Semiologic alternatives for wordpress based CMS?

A simple way for a simple version of WP as CMS was one we used for my alternate site. (I’d give a link but we switched themes.)

I took out all the archive-by-date links from the sidebars.
I set up categories as “sections” of the site: Articles, Tutorials, etc.
On the category template, I set up a type of table of contents on the sidebar that really just listed the categories and sub-categories. The main category archive loop I altered just to show the post title.
Whenever I wrote a new post (think of it as an article instead of a post) I made sure to add the “more…” tag after the first paragraph or so.

All that gave the site more of a CMS feel and less of a blog-feel. Simple-looking probably but it worked for what we needed.