My girlfriend fancies setting up a quick wedding website / blog. A wordpress blog would seem to be the way to go, but owning a domain would be handy if we ever decide to go down the route of making a business out of it.

She’s entirely non-techy. I could write a smidge of HTML a long time ago (long enough ago that CSS was new and snazzy), but I’d rather not get bogged down in the the technicalities of it, and would definitely prefer if I wasn’t required to help with each update. I’d rather mess about twiddling with the design and suggesting puntastic copy…

Can anyone a) let me know if wordpress is the right route to go down in terms of CMS and b) point me at a decent hosting firm that makes setup and updating an easy thing to do?

WordPress.com

Would that not leave us stuck with xyzblog.wordpress.com?

Self-hosted WordPress is what I would recommend. Take your time picking a suitable theme, think about what you want the site to do and what content you are going to put on it.

Would that not leave us stuck with xyzblog.wordpress.com?

I think you can use your own domain.

Buy a domain. I use one.com which is £10 for the first year then £20 after that. They are OK, not brilliant, but fine. Then you can use a wordpress or write your own HTML, and swap at your leisure. I have two sites one is wordpress and is easy to edit and looks pretty, the other is written from scratch and gets better google results.

Nick – are they identical sites with identical content and identical domain names?

Johndoh, no they are very different so of course there is more to it. The wordpress has a lot more content, the HTML one I have been more focused on the SEO because I have more control.

Buy a domain. I use one.com which is £10 for the first year then £20 after that. They are OK, not brilliant, but fine. Then you can use a wordpress or write your own HTML,

I’ve just helped a friend set up their own business website using One as the hosting site too, and based it on WordPress to make it as simple for her to update as possible.

I discovered that using the pre-configured wordpress they provide, you’re unable to install extra plugins/themes/widgets, so had to install a “full” version via the FTP server they provide. It wasn’t hard, but it could be quite daunting for some folk, especially as the documentation they provide to help with it was shockingly bad. The bloke on the chat page was pretty helpful though.

the documentation they provide to help with it was shockingly bad. The bloke on the chat page was pretty helpful though.

That has been my experience, too. Basically ignore their documentation and either google some instructions from someone else or use the chat.

To could go with WordPress.com and Custom Domain or use Vidahost.com for both. Basic web hosting is £17 per year and z Domains from £2.79 pet year. They have one click installs for many, many CMS and they really are one click! Use this coupon code, STW2013, for 10% off hosting too!

For Themes, have a look round Themeforest.