How bad is it if I don't have a web site?

LJD said:

I use wordpress.com, too. (See signature for my website.) There are times I want more flexibility, but...I don't know a lot about these things, and I fear that finding a host and installing wordpress.org would cause levels of frustration that I wouldn't be able to deal with.

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Your WP is simple and to the point. I like it.

By the way...

If as you make your way around the web and find a site that you like, you can drop the URL into http://whatwpthemeisthat.com/ and see if it's a WP site, and what theme it's using. It'll also show you several of the plugins being used.

cmhbob said:

By the way...

If as you make your way around the web and find a site that you like, you can drop the URL into http://whatwpthemeisthat.com/ and see if it's a WP site, and what theme it's using. It'll also show you several of the plugins being used.

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Thanks, I'd forgotten about that site.

IMO, there's not a damn thing wrong with using wordpress.com. You can still even buy a domain via something like namecheap.com to use with it. Blogger.com probably has a similar setup that allows that. And if you decide later you want to grow beyond wordpress.com, you can migrate the site to a new host. So it's not like you're stuck forever if you start out there.

LJD said:

I don't know a lot about these things, and I fear that finding a host and installing wordpress.org would cause levels of frustration that I wouldn't be able to deal with.

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I began creating web sites by hand at the dawn of the internet, so I could almost do it in my sleep. But I still use WP.com for my web site and for those I create for friends. Because it's a better use of my time and money.

JJ Litke said:

...there's not a damn thing wrong with using wordpress.com. You can still even buy a domain via something like namecheap.com to use with it. ...And if you decide later you want to grow beyond wordpress.com, you can migrate the site to a new host. So it's not like you're stuck forever if you start out there.

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It's also fairly easy to migrate from a WP.com site to a WP.org site. WP.org is the same site, but with slots for adding stuff you can't get with WP.com. If you don't need the plugins available for WP.org then you can stay with WP.com.

WP.com has several dozen "widgets" which are essentially WP.com plugins. They can do a lot of fairly sophisticated stuff. Take a look at my web site. On the right side of my two-column site you'll see several examples of such widgets. And those are just the ones I found useful. There are many more available.