WordPress vs Animal Kingdom?

I don’t understand your forum system. I’m sure this isn’t the right place to post my question(s), but I don’t know where else to put it, so here goes.

I want to create a content management system focusing on the animal kingdom. You can see the site I’ve been working on at https://www.geozoo.org/stacks/ Watch the navigation links at the top of the page and the column of names on the right as you try these URL’s:

https://www.geozoo.org/stacks/Animalia
https://www.geozoo.org/stacks/Mammalia
https://www.geozoo.org/stacks/Canidae

I thought I could make a CMS by myself, but I quickly hit a brick wall at https://www.geozoo.org/stacks/Canis Here, I’m displaying names from TWO database table cells (child and parent), since species names traditionally include the parent genus (e.g. Canis lupus, Homo sapiens).

The problem is the space between Canis and lupus and/or the fact that I’m drawing data from two cells. It’s probably easy to fix, but I’ve tried several solutions without success. Everything seems to involve a mixture of MySQL, PHP and/or Apache mod_rewrite, and I’m so confused, I can scarcely concentrate on it any more.

Basically, I want to be able to view pages at URL’s like these:

https://www.geozoo.org/stacks/Animalia
https://www.geozoo.org/stacks/Canis_lupus
https://www.geozoo.org/topics/Temperate-Conifer-Forests
https://www.geozoo.org/stacks/Tundra-Mammals

…and I want to be able to access articles via different terms. For example, the following would all link to the same article:

https://www.geozoo.org/stacks/wolf
https://www.geozoo.org/stacks/gray_wolf
https://www.geozoo.org/stacks/Canis_lupus
https://www.geozoo.org/stacks/top-predator

I’d also like to figure out how to make a “modified preorder tree traversal” script, like the one described at the popular tutorial at https://www.sitepoint.com/article/hierarchical-data-database/3

So, if I download and install WordPress, are any of the things I described going to be a little easier to do? Am I likely to find forum members who have done these things who can share their scripts with me and help me along?

I’m a beginner-intermediate at PHP and MySQL and just recently learned how make Apache mod_rewrite rules. I’ve installed and experimented with Mambo and Drupal, but they seem fairly difficult and somehow confining to me. WordPress seems a little less restrictive.

Thanks.