The first decision you have to make is where your blog is going to live. You have two basic options when creating your site:
Do it at https://wordpress.com
Install on a third-party web server (hosted or your own)
Let's look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of each of these two options.
The advantage of using WordPress.com is that they take care of all the technical details for you. The software has already been installed, and it will be upgraded for you whenever there's an upgrade. You're not responsible for anything else but the management of your content. A major disadvantage is that you lose almost all of the theme and plugin control you'd have otherwise. WordPress.com will not let you upload or edit your own theme, though it will let you (for a fee) edit the CSS of any theme you use. WordPress.com will not let you upload or manage plugins at all. Some plugins are installed by default (most notably Akismet, for spam blocking, and also...