Also they allow you to customize almost everything with a backend platform so that you don't have to do any coding.

Thanks for your help :)

Dannielle

I'm on Thesis.  It's a paid theme but it's also tons easier than the free one I had.  That was some years ago too though so there may be better free versions these days (is Atahualpa free?).

Unfortunately, there are days when 'blogging' takes a severe backburner to tons of tech issues.  It's part of what we do.  Many a night I've been up to the wee hours trying to figure out a piece of code.  Sometimes you have to take a step back and figure out what's most important and go with that.

2. That's harder. If you don't want to code anything or spend money, you are kind of stuck with the free options that are out there not customized. I use Thesis, but it did cost money. A popular free theme is http://wordpress.org/extend/th...../atahualpa.

3. There are a lot of plugins for different things. You have to be more specific on what you are looking for there. For spam comments, there are good options (I use Conditional CAPTCHA with Akismet). Fonts are managed by your theme, not plugins. You should learn how to do the ads yourself with simple HTML widgets, plugins just add extra code to your site that slow it down. For security, check out WSD Security by Website Defender.

1. Permalinks - I can not get my permalinks changed from the default. Whenever I change them to something other than the defalt, readers are seeing 404 errors and are having problems commenting on posts. Thanks to Financial Samurai for pointing this out... So I've resigned to leaving them at the default. From what I've read, I have to change things that I know nothing about to get them sorted out.

2. Blog Theme - I wanted to change my blog theme (Clear Line), to make the blog look a bit more professional. But because I did not listen to Shaun of Money Cactus, I wasted an entire Sunday trying to change the theme. At the end of the madness, I'm still with Clear Line. I want to get some advertising on the site and to use it as an active portfolio which shows consistent writing and fairly okay content. However, I'm having problems finding a good free theme, that I can really mould into what I want. Coding can be a headache and I do not want to buy any themes because I really can't afford it.

3. Plugins - Some plugins are so complicated that it's frustrating. I want simple, yet effective plugins that can manage ads, fonts, security, downloads, and comment forms that prevent spam. I thought that I had a solution for the comment forms, but it seems as though spammy stuff is still making it through.

I think part of my problem is also time. I usually write my posts on weekends, so that during the week, I can use my allocated blog time to visit other blogs. I'm also studying and working, so time is scarce. I'd like to eventually earn some money from Odd Cents, but with theway things are going, I'm not sure that will happen any time soon.

What works for you? Any suggestions???

PS. Many many thanks to Shaun of Money Cactus and Jeremy of Modest Modest for their good advice, even though I did not listen at times... sigh.