How to start Wordpress Blog

I don't blog or wordpress but the easiest thing to do should be to sign up at a blog hosting site, unless you have some reason to justify hosting one on your own dime.

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Hosting is no issue where you are. most of the good hosts have servers on other continents. I use https://siteground.com
It isn't the cheapest, but not bad, around 650 annually depending on the options. You can find for less than half of that if you are not up to much. You will need:
SSL (https)
Akismet for spam protection when you actually start. $35
dedicated IP given you will be on a shared server
WP-Optimize, People hate slow sites and so does google, within 2-3 seconds f you are not loaded people will leave. $40
A theme. I use generate press premium. Used to design Static websites a couple decades ago, switched to wordpress. That should be under $50 and it's fast.
Everyone wants to sell you their plugins, don't buy any more than needed they slow the site. keep it simple.
get in touch with me if you do decide to proceed, I'll help you get started after you have purchased hosting.
It is the content that makes an interesting website. Unless your just having fun, learning and don't care.

Bob Crowley said:

Thanks for the feedback so far.

At this stage it's a learning curve, just to get familiar with the process. As time goes by I'll try to make it more interesting. So I won't care much about my initial blogs.

I'll get in touch with Palmfever when I'm about to make a start. Thanks for the offer of assistance.

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Yes it is, but it's a fun curve. Easy, lemme know if you have questions. When I started there were people who helped me some. Now it seems everyone is selling something. Good luck and enjoy the experience.

Bob Crowley said:

I'm thinking about starting a blog using Wordpress. I'm not interested in a website at the moment and just want to start a blog.

I'm in Australia, so I suppose that may mean some overseas issues with hosting, but do any of you gurus here have suggestions bearing in mind you're talking to a non-Geek?

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Keep WordPress, and all your plugins and themes up-to-date so you'll have the latest security patches.
For the hosting, make sure its PHP, web server (usually Apache), and database server (usually MySQL) are kept up-to-date so they have the latest security patches.
Also make sure your site is behind a good web application firewall (WAF). This could be ModSecurity on the webserver (with a good ruleset - no rules means no protection), or using a service like Sucuri's WAF, or both in combination.
Back up the site often (preferably daily) and keep older backups (I often recommend 2 monthlies). Hackers tend to compromise a site, lay low for a few weeks, and then slowly become more and more obvious. Having backups from before disaster strikes is essential. There should also be copies of these outside of the server.
Don't add too many plugins. They're not all tested with each other, and the more you add, the more you risk making the site both slower and broken. It's fine to have a few good ones, but if I'm seeing the number approach 20 while people complain about how slow their sites are, then I begin suspecting that as a contributor.
If the site's needs get too big for you, you probably need a developer to help you. Finding a good one can be a challenge in and of itself, and you want this person to be absolutely trustworthy. Maintain a good relationship with this person! Disgruntled devs can become very damaging hackers.
Use long, strong passwords (15 characters at least), make sure they cannot be easily guessed, cracked, or otherwise obtained, and only enter them on encrypted, secure connections. That means HTTPS, SFTP, or FTPS. Don't use HTTP or FTP when entering these passwords, they are unencrypted and insecure.
Don't keep the old version of the site in a subfolder of the main site. That's a wide-open door for hackers. Keep the old copy completely outside of the main site's document root.
If you get hacked, you or your developer will need to check the site files AND the database for code that isn't supposed to be there. So make sure you keep good backups of both of them, safe and secure which you can use to compare with the suspicious new site copy.

WordPress is something like 40% of the Internet. As such, it is a major target, and WordPress sites get hacked a lot. Taking these steps to protect yourself is essential.

If you have absolutely no previous web design experience, I would recommend Wordpress.com.

You can just pick a theme and get your blog started, delegating all of the complex security issues to Wordpress.com instead of having to deal with them yourself, and it’s free. Since you are not interested in a website and just want a blog, that’s probably the best option. If you want your blog to be taken seriously, I would recommend a custom domain which is about $15 USD a year.

For the learning curve, there are a ton of books and online video tutorials. I recommend Teaching Yourself Visually Wordpress (book). And if there are any programmers reading this, Wordpress Complete - Sixth Edition has proven to be valuable for me. But you shouldn’t need the latter book unless you want to design your own custom theme or plug-in.

Sketcher said:

WordPress is something like 40% of the Internet. As such, it is a major target, and WordPress sites get hacked a lot. Taking these steps to protect yourself is essential.

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This is why I prefer to code flat HTML/CSS for all of my blogs. There’s very little to hack into, and if someone tries, just restore from last backup and change all of the passwords. Much less stress.