Its a question of what it is you want your website to ‘do’
WordPress and similar Content Management Systems (CMS) are most useful for a site where you’re going to keep adding content – like a blog. If you look at typical blogs you have content arranged by title and date and the ability to look at each entry on its own or all of them in a time line, and functionality like comments and so on. Depending on how you muck about with it you can all but hide the ‘blogyness’ of it.
If you’re only looking to have a handful of static pages then a CMS might do more to get in the way than to help.
Basically you have two approaches to making ordinary websites (rather than stuff with lots of complex stuff going on) one is to design the site off line with something like dream weaver or a similar HTML editor, and put the site and a whole functioning thing online, the other is to use a CMS which is to place a ready made bit of navigation/functionality on a server and then sort of pour your content into it bit by bit and the CMS makes sure everything links and functions.
Once its set up using a CMS is a bit like posting on a forum, or listing something on ebay or similar – you type your content into boxes in your browser, upload pictures and so on and the CMS makes it work, in the same way as ebay make it work or posting in this forums just works. Without a CMS you need to get under the bonnet of your website with and HTML editor anytime you want to change or update anything.
