Should I Even Bother?

But, because I’m looking for free blog hosting and I know nothing of PHP or SQL, should I even bother trying to use WordPress?

No. Maybe not.

There were a few posts made within the past couple of months of people providing wordpress based hosting packages. They would install WP for you on your domain and you would just blog.
Most regular web hosts have the abilty of installing WP along with many other software automatically.
You don’t necessarily need to know PHP or SQL to use WP. You can safely use the default version of everything. Changing the style of WP is as simple as replacing a single file, as long as you can use a FTP program you’re golden.
And perhaps, you MIGHT want to learn a little about PHP, SQL and website hosting in the future? ??
Regards

Could you please tell me which posts these were or what terms to search the forum for so I can find these ‘wordpress-based hosting packages’? Thanks!

The key word in your description previously of your requirements was free.

Right, so none of these mentioned hosts were free?

Depends on your personality. I don’t think WordPress is difficult at all. But if you want someone to do the work for you, then WordPress or any other stand alone program might not be for you. If that’s the case, you should look in to a blog service like Typepad.

Since you want free, no ads, and don’t want to learn PHP or mySQL, there’s most likely nothing available.
Given your list of expectations, I don’t think there’s a bloghost of any kind anywhere that will do what you want without dropping one of those at a minimum.

Nice, blogthing looks pretty sweet. If there’s nothing that does everything I was looking for for free, then blogthing might work just fine.

How long has blogthing been up? What happens if the google ads don’t cover the hosting costs? What arrangements are there for backing up your entries?
Here’s another suggestion. Sign up with blogger, get a blogspot account, try it out for a couple of months. If you decide blogger isn’t your bag and you’re serious enough about blogging to pay for hosting (and hosting can be got very cheaply nowadays) move to wordpress then.

Strange, though, blogthing has no FAQ or anything, so I don’t even know how to upload via the FTP it talks about! Anyway, thanks a lot, I signed up for a blogthing account and I’ll start trying to figure out stuff now.

ah, overlooked your requirement for categories. sorry ’bout that. but in general blogger is pretty good for beginners.

Right, Anon. I actually have had a Blogger account and used it for several months, and want to ‘upgrade’ to something with categories. Blogthing looks pretty cool, and I’ll have to ask about arrangements for backing up my entries. They do have a paid service which eliminates the google ads, so they are getting some additional financial support from that.

Or try LinkSky for just $4.95/mo

Good to know those are out there, but I’m really looking for something free right now. I think blogthing will work for me, if they fix their FTP upload system soon. By all means, keep posting possible solutions for those who may check this thread later looking for free or cheap blog hosting solutions.

Moshu:
Do you use linksky?
Their prices seem pretty good- Especially the Ultra- how is the uptime? Any problems with them?