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I've been a big fan of the 17th Legion since I got into 40k due: to their religious nature, their color scheme, and my interest in villainous factions; but I haven't really the direction 40k is going towards, so I've been thinking about getting into the Heresy instead, but I have one problem. I like to make my army's based off of the organizational structures of the faction I play, unfortunately I know little of how Legions are organized and how the Word Bearers fought during these times in particular. I kinda want to go with an Infantry Heavy army armed with mid-ranged weaponry (Bolters, Flamers, Meltas, Volkites) Though I do want to bring a little bit of everything as well. If anyone would be able to give me some insight into how to build such an Army or could inform me a bit of the Legion's nature it would be greatly appreciated.

I'm not sure I understand the question. The Legions contained a wide variety of specialist formations organized in wildly different fashions; there is no "standard" army composition.

My two standard recommendations to people looking to start 30k are to a) avoid the Primarch right off the bat; they're big and scary but can also be a crutch and tend to be very unfun in small games. And b) try to start using the Pride of the Legion Rite of War; your core Troops in 30k are 10-20-man squads mostly kitted with small arms, but Pride of the Legion lets you put Tactical Veterans (5-10-man squads with access to heavy/special weapons) in Troops, which makes the army cheaper to build, more flexible at small points levels, and feel more like a 40k army while you're learning the game.

As to the Word Bearers specifically you can go in a lot of directions with them; the Legion morale buff is applicable to pretty much any army build that isn't vehicle-heavy, and fluffwise they're the Legion most likely to field non-Legion allies (cultists, daemons), so I can't really point you at an obvious or canonical direction to go building them like I can for some Legions.

Some notes on the Legion-specific stuff:

Diabolist: Special Consul who opens up access to Dark Channeling (random upgrade table to some basic squads). Supports melee builds, not the greatest option but can be useful.

Burning Lore: Decent. 30k psykers still use 7e rules so you need a bunch of psykers to feed enough dice to your army to get powers off, but the Burning Lore upgrade gives you freer access to psykers than any Legion other than the Thousand Sons.

Tainted Weapons: Don't. AP off of power weapons is always going to be more valuable.

Mhara Gal: Far from an auto-take, but very entertaining. Be sure to keep at least one melee weapon on it (it's much better at melee than shooting), and be sure to keep the anti-psyker radius in mind (it does hit your own stuff), but otherwise it's a melee Dreadnaught that can walk through walls and penalizes Invulnerable saves. Particularly funny in Zone Mortalis.

Gal Vorbak: Odd. Primarily a melee unit but they do keep their boltguns and have the option for special weapons, with a bit of luck and a Chaplain they're perfectly capable of shredding a Terminator unit with I5 Rending attacks, but their 3+ armour means you have to be more careful about how you deliver them than you do with Terminators.

Ashen Circle: Fairly pointless with the red-book rules, but under the beta rules they're much better. They're not a first-tier deathstar-killer melee unit but they'll chew up and spit out most infantry.

Erebus: Crams a lot of functions into one body; he's a Praetor with a weaker statline but he's also a Chaplain, has the Burning Lore, and counts as a Diabolist. Not much of a beatstick with his AP4 but solves a lot of awkward mandatory-HQ requirements.

Kor Phaeron: I'll elaborate if you really want to find a way to use him, but generally Erebus does everything he does better.

Zardu Layak: Strong support character, not much of a beatstick. Access to Daemonology and the Daemon rule makes him a good choice if you want to use Daemons, and if you like the Ashen Circle his Warlord Trait lets you use them in Troops and use Dark Channeling on them. His relative lack of beatstickery can be mitigated with the Blade-Slaves, who are pretty hardcore.

Hol Beloth: Mostly just a stock Praetor; the 1/game army-wide WS5 buff is nice but not incredible given that it doesn't help your stronger melee units (Gal Vorbak, the Ashen Circle and Weaponmasters TacVets are WS5 already).

Unique Rites:
Dark Brethren: Mostly redundant now that the Ruinstorm list has been printed and is on the allies chart.
Last of the Serrated Sun: Nice if you like the Gal Vorbak, but also serves as a less restrictive version of Orbital Assault since it lets you give Drop Pods to everyone but doesn't restrict you from deploying non-infantry models on the table.