The choice of your blogging platform is in most cases the fourth decision you make when starting up a new blog ( after the decision to start the blog, pick a concept for your blog, and think about your domain name). Many websites run on Wordpress.
Wordpress has two different flavors and understanding the pros and cons of both is important as it will influence your daily blog operations as you move forward.
Wordpress.org
Wordpress.org is an open source (and thus a free) platform that provides you with tools required to set up a blog. In order to get started you’ll need to find an hosting service that will be compatible with Wordpress hosting. Wordpress.org has a list of preferred hosting services (but also companies not listed there can host your blog). This blog is hosted with Ayola.Net, and to date their service was completely satisfactory. (update, lots of dependability problems have cropped up since this article was written, possible with any host, and instructive)
Wordpress.com is a free-fully hosted blogging platform built on the Worpress.org software . Domain names of blogs hosted by Wordpress.com will always have the suffix “*.wordpress.com”. Here you don’t need to find an hosting service, nor to setup the Wordpress software on your own.
Hope this clairifies the differences between the two, I know I was a bit confused when starting out. Wordpress is an excellent blogging in either incaration..
For more on this topic, please take a look at:
Wordpress.org vs. Wordpress.com pros and cons | Blogger Help