Is already owned by someone in Canada.

I'm a big Wordpress fan, and I've tried them all - blogger, Moveable Type, Greymatter, ExpressionEngine, Serendipity, Joomla, Drupal, Typepad etc etc.

The Wordpress user community is helpful, the plugins varied, and it's much more reliable than it used to be. Plenty of webhosts offer one-click installs and upgrades, so you never need to get your hands dirty customising php files or uploading via FTP.

As for hosting, I tend to place stuff that's not mission-critical with Dreamhost - they're cheap and cheerful, and the technical help is good, but don't expect 100% uptime.

is good too - they let you install wordpress from the control panel.

They aren't the cheapest but you can get annual hosting for about £100 p.a.

I have three websites running on Wordpress at the moment — I think it's a fantastic bit of software.

I can't add much to what Mr L has said, but bear in mind that you don't have to buy the web address from the same company as your host. GoDaddy always seem to have cheap domain names, although their hosting isn't particularly cheaper than anyone else's. I've used maiahost.com, who've been pretty decent.

Have a dig around the discussion forums. You might want to look at a host with an easy upgrade path, in case your site gets popular. You can start on the budget plan, then advance upwards.

My blog is nothing fancy, and I liked all the designs you could get on Wordpress, but each one will or won't allow you to do certain things, and there was no login on screen either. It was all a bit slow. There were no RSS feeds in order either, so I gave up.

If you have a host that you can install your own php scripts on, you'll find a number of prewritten free scripts that sit looking at a folder or folders that you can simply ftp a bunch of photographs to and they'll instantly be available online. They're handy if you want to make pictures available to others but don't want to go down the flkr route and don't feel the need for captions etc. I can't think of any of them at the moment but if I found them, you can too!
Having used them for busines purposes for over 10 years now, I wouldn't move away from 1&1 for hosting. They also host wordpress blogs with the minimum of fuss.

not just a blogging platform, you can use it to knock up a pretty decent website and managing your content is a doddle. some of the custom themes add loads of extra whistle and bells and most of them are free.
I'd recommend Birch hosting. Small uk based firm, they do some very cheap packages. I'm paying about £2 a month with unlimited space and email. Very reliable and helpful.

useful and informative thanks. I have flickr account already wanted to show my pics in a more controllable environment, flickr's ace but want a parrallel platform. Will check out the sites anymore tips always welcome,

Here's what I knocked up using a wordpress template I found. Really like wordpress very easy to use, alot of sensible presets, things seem to easier than I think all the time. Went with birchhosting was really impressed by their service, they helped me through the set up as I was a techno klutz and even took things off my order i didn't need, site seems stable so I'm very pleased.

here's my site for anyone interested thanks again for your support http://northernskies.co/