Please, no rocks just wet sponges, rotten fruit...

No ... the "Wordpress for Dummies" book is about the self-hosted .org kind.

It's a good book, I have it and recommend it to anyone who really wants to use Wordpress. It's definitely a whole lot better and more reliable than almost any information you can get online (with the exception of Istvan Horvath's posts here, which are totally accurate and reliable).

I'm still not much of a Wordpress user, myself, though. Am too technophobic. Wordpress is just massively complicated. The simplest little thing requires you to know "CSS" and God-knows-what-else, and is generally a nightmare and a disaster.

Every time there's a thread here asking for Wordpress help (i.e. three times a day, after meals), I get more and more pleased, reading the replies, that I hardly use it at all.

You and I are in a small minority - though actually it's not nearly as small as the majority often like to pretend: occasionally we do also get a "How The Hell Can You Cope With This Wordpress?" thread, and then sometimes it's surprising how many people do come out of the woodwork and express their fear, loathing, contempt, technophobia and embarrassment (though by no means necessarily in that order).

I'm "just saying" (because if I don't, nobody else will).

No rocks or fruit

What you are asking about isn't specifically WP, it's related to websites in general. Assuming you have a domain name and hosting set up, then the root directory is your domain, www.mydomain.com. When you type that in, you would see your blog.

A sub-directory (or sub-domain) is something like www.mydomain.com/myblog, with "myblog" being the name of the sub-directory. If you install your blog in a sub-domain then you'd have to type in the entire thing to see the blog.

Anyway, look for general information about how websites are set up and that should help.

Well I don't know of anything that talks about Wordpress.com as opposed to Wordpress.org. Are you sure which one you wanted? The .com is hosted by Wordpress and is not for professional/commercial blogs. The .org is self hosted and is used for professional/commercial blogs.

The difference is that with the .org, you have to pay for hosting but you also get your own domain name (i.e. with the .org, you get "www. mygreatsite.com. With the .com service, you get "mygreatsite.wordpress. com." BTW, the space there is just because of the automatic system on Warrior Forum. Just pretend there was no space).

Anyway, the interface is very similar from one to the other one, the big difference being that you need to install wordpress.org whereas with .com, you just choose a name and away you go. Either way, I found this site has loads of great information about it: WPBeginner - Beginner's Guide for WordPress. They also offer free installation if you are going to use a wordpress.org self hosted site as long as you buy your hosting through their affiliate link. You could also get free installation from johnchow.com if you use his affiliate link.

Here... read and follow the instructions in this thread. Don't be
afraid of it. If you screw it up, you can always delete it and give
it another shot. No big deal, there...

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...nhackable.html

If you are going to learn, you might as well get it right from the
beginning with making your blogs secure.

As someone who has worked with massively technical 'things'
all my life, I can say the first go round is typically the worst.
Gets better the next time, etc...

CSS, PHP and all that noise isn't hard to learn. I recommend
you dive in and start playing around with customizing your blog
after you get through the installation. Edit them directly in the
files. Make backups before tinkering...

I recommend you download Notepad++ (plus-plus is part of the
name) so you can edit files a lot easier. It displays them very
nicely with line numbers and a clear format. NP++ is free.

But if that is still not you, then pay someone to tinker for you.


Ken

A site that came recommended through a StomperNet post is:

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009...dpress-expert/

There is a lot of information there including free and paid themes. The main topics are:

* Theme Roundups, Theme Templates, and Theme Frameworks
* Tutorials and Tips
* Plugins
* Tricks, Customizations, and Hacks
* Galleries and Inspiration
* Blogs, Articles and Other Resources

It was first posted in 2009 so you might find some of the information dated. But it is still a good source to check out.

Marvin

The thing is, wordpress.com is very good. Why? Because it gives you a damned good place to tinker with basic concepts and not mess up your own site.

Seriously, go and make a free blog on wordpress.com. The WP is already pre-installed and you won't have to mess around with mySQL or anything. Just look around, find out what basic things are like themes (oh yeah, it's a big must), plugins, posts, how to put images in, how to link, how to trackback, etc.

That's what I did. Then I went on to make my own self-hosted WP blog after learning the basics.

Keep an eye out for ugly blog themes and decide what kind of stuff you want.