setting up a blog with a domain name - which is best for hosting - wordpress?

[happyfeet2015]

I have bought a domain name with 123reg and now looking at a hosting platform. Someone suggested using 123 to host it and then use wordpress to build website. Not sure if it is worth paying for a host or just using something free. I am a student nutritional therapist so looking to start a health/food blog.

I'm not a professional web person, but have put together a few different websites on Wordpress and you can get it - with a bit of effort - to do pretty much anything you want. And for hosting a blog, it's definitely the best option.

I'm a professional 'web person' :D I know this is a bit late but...

Wordpress isn't really a thing, it's two things:

Wordpress.com

• Hosted blogging platform.
• Simple and quick way to get blogging.
• It's free.

Wordpress.org (I work with this)

• Free open source blogging software that can be installed on a web server.
• Incredibly flexible with mirriad themes and plugins (many of which are good and free)
• While software is free, the hosting you pay for from someone such as 123reg.
• Can be made to look completely your own, I don't think this is true of .com

Wordpress.com would let you have a custom domain (I dont think .wordpress.com looks very good, IMHO).

My own Wordpress.org site costs me around £50 per year.

Also consider your email address, gmail, live, yahoo email addresses never look that good to me, they come across as throw away. Web hosting sometimes includes email hosting or can be added for a little extra.

@olderthankyouthink, does your wordpress.org site link to the mumsnet bloggers network ok? I've only just checked my profile (after a good year on here!) and realised that none of my blogs are coming up under it. I've emailed mumsnet to ask why this might be but they're not replying.

And sorry for the hijack, to the orginal post- I'm self employed and started with Wix, when I moved to Wordpress I was told by everyone that .org is the one to go with, for the reasons above I think.

monkey Oh no! That's not very good.
My blog isnt on the network, sorry, it's not even used for blogging I'm a professional web developer and it's part of my portfolio.
I'm not sure how the bloggers network pulls in the posts, never bothered to look in to it, I'd have thought using a RSS feed. That would be in the head of the theme you are using... (Sorry if that doesn't mean anything to you) I could take a quick look if you like, but I'm still not 100% sure it's that but the few MN blogs I've just checked have them.

@olderthanyouthink (why won't it tag you properly?!) thank you- I have a web developer I'll email, but on my mumsnet account it just says insert blog URL, not RSS, so not sure where I'd insert that.

MN doesn't really tag people, you just bold their name or part of it so they spot it easily.
It should just happen automatically without need to specify the rss URL.