Driving me nuts – please help

Hi

I’ve just made the leap from general pages to blog on wp and have had THE MOST irritating time trying to get this all set up….finally got it mostly set up but the ‘how to’ part is overwhelming. I would really appreciate short, easy solutions minus the techhie stuff – I learn better doing it and then reviewing what I did.

Now, I set this blog in the root directory of my domain. The general permissions are set under 777 but I can’t create the upload folder.

Can anyone suggest proper permission values for wp to do what it has to do while protecting the whole site from hackery? I don’t have the time nor the patience to go through 200 different value settings trying to find the right one. SURELY wp can provide the values, huh?

My next problem – Added a series of posts and set the read settings to show 5 recent on the main/home page. I’ve got 10 posts but only 5 show, which is what I want – however how to access ALL posts?

I assume it was clicking on the category page, i.e. one has 7 posts…but on the category page, only 5 show up and there is no “continued” or “next page” or “show all posts in this category” link or option.

How do I get that to happen – preferably without having to return to college. I see other blogs have managed to work it out, surely there is a simple solution that isn’t so convoluted and confusing.

PLEASE help. I genuinely want to use WP and want to learn but this is the most pain in the butt installation of something I’ve encountered in ages. I can make a webpage show all categories in 5 minutes of coding, so what is the option for wp?

Please answer with an answer (and not just to say “uh, sorry, dunno” ;-p )

Thanks.