Using Wordpress.com to start you blog is a simple, free, and effective way to begin a new blog.  Some key features that we find most beneficial of using of Wordpress.com are integrated stats and spam control by Akismet.  But those are just a few of the laundry list of features that make this hosted blogging platform and community such a great choice for new bloggers.

Wordpress.com Blogs

Wordpress.com Blog Features

It’s hard to believe that this collage of features is available as a free blog tool.

Wordpress.com is the community site developed as a compliment to the Wordpress.org project.  Wordpress.org has long been a favorite blog software by the developer community and with the major advancements in both features, functions, and general marketing site design of the Wordpress 2.5 platform we are seeing this blog software and community flourish.  There are more advanced users that prefer to install Wordpress on their own server or hosting and those are not the users that Wordpress.com is targeting. Wordpress.org, the software version available as of the time of this post is Wordpress version 2.6.1.

Wordpress.com target those users that don’t want to hassel with software and would prefer a simple sign-up and start the blog process.

Wordpress.com Signup

Wordpress.com Sign Up Page

With a simple blog sign-up page, most bloggers can be active into their first post in 5 minutes.  This blog community makes it easy for a new blogger to get a feel for the entire blogging process.  It also makes it very simple to find blog templates and install a theme to quickly give your blog character.

See also New Blog Template Ideas http://www.startingablog.com/starting-a-blog/blog-basics/new-blog-templates.html.  The Wordpress.com Sign Up page is located at http://wordpress.com/signup/.