Creating an authority based site split by category

I have a site that is split into multiple sections based on category. It has a similar feel to this site: http://www.inc.com/basic-accounting?nav=navbar

You can see on inc.com that they have a navbar at the top and if you click Finance, for example, you get a list of articles based on their Finance category.

What is the best way to set up this type of structure on a WordPress site? it has to have the numbering along the bottom so that you can limit the page to say showing only 20 links (+thumbnails) to articles and then they have to click 2,3 etc. to get to the next page, as done on inc.com.

How would you achieve this using WordPress?

Thanks,

Jon