JasonBlu I’m using wordpress more as a CMS than a blog.
Its incredibly adaptive but does, as moshu explained, present its own problems using it in this way.
First and foremost you really should be looking towards the custom write panel plugin.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-write-panel/
This will allow you to set, using custom fields, your own content types. So if you have varying degree’s of content types then you design them on the fields you’ll require just for that type. You can also assign those new content types to default categories, meeting your second need.
Views and ratings can be handled with plugins and i’d highly recomend lester chans plugins to meet your needs
WP-PostRatings 1.20 (for your rating needs) and WP-PostViews 1.20 (for the amount of views per each post).
http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming.php
Then you can add tags to each (allowing finer control of your sections) and all that would be left to do is style your output (outputting your custom fields the way you want). Each category can be styled uniquely different too using category templates.
You’ll likely need to adapt or write some minor php to achieve everything you want and this is where you’ll struggle. Although the documentation generally at wordpress.org is pretty good, some bits have pretty huge gaps in information. You’ll likely find little help within the forums too as most users are more happy using wordpress as a blog than pushing the foundation.
Generally however theres usually a few different approaches to solve a problem and although they may not be perfect, will work as you had hoped.
I personally find that i hit a stumbling block, can’t see a way past something, spend a few days researching, asking people etc and almost always find a workable solution around the problem.
I love how wordpress uses php as its template framework as this allows you to be really adaptive from the offset.
So yes it all perfectly possible, is achievable, but you’ll face issues and frustration from time to time that you just have to ride through.
Hope that helps.
