For example, its impossible to install WordPress plug-ins on a free WordPress.com blog. And although you can customize a free website's layout, you cant install your own custom template; instead, you're limited to using one of the 200 or so templates that WordPress has chosen for you.

Overall, WordPress.com is great for people who are just getting started with blogging. WordPress.coms free service lets you become acquainted with WordPress, and its paid-hosting service is a viable (though certainly not perfect) option for users who dont already have a domain host.

If you do have a hosting service, youll probably want to install and use WordPress on that company's servers. You may wish to poke around in your hosting services settings before starting a full WordPress install, however, because most contemporary hosting services can automate the process for you (I told you it was popular). Hosting services typically call such features One-Click WordPress Installs or something similar, and usually they automate the steps I'm about to discuss.

Advanced users: Installing the WordPress platform is not a particularly complicated process, but it does require you to make some changes to WordPresss setup files in a text editor, as well as to use an FTP client. First, you should download the latest stable build of WordPress and unzip it onto your computer. Then, you need to create a MySQL database on your server so that WordPresss PHP has a database to interact with. Remember that your Web host likely has tools to help automate this process, but such tools (and the best ways to use them) will vary from host to host.

Next, you have to rename the file wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php and edit it. For starters, you need to enter the name, admin name, and password for the MySQL database you just created; WordPress.org has a to all the changes you should make to the file. Once you have properly edited your wp-config.php file, you have to use an FTP client to upload the entire WordPress folder to your server.