Wordpress.org hosting

My travel blog website Travels with Birdy is hosted by Go Daddy's Managed WordPress Hosting. It's different from the regular Go Daddy hosting. It's supposedly on servers optimized for WordPress, so they update your WordPress and do some other things to help it run smoothly.

My husband has also used Host Gator for sites and has heard good things about Blue Host.

Have you looked at Wordpress.com, which I believe still offers free Wordpress hosting? May be a good place to get started.

Most web hosting sites these day offer one-click installers for apps such as Wordpress. However, you will still need to know how to keep it patched with security and code base updates. Don't assume the web host automatically does these or ignore doing so, as a vulnerability can result in hackers gaining control of your site. Not to mention, losing years of your work. It has happened with Wordpress before. And other major CMS based sites.

Also, making routine backups of your code base/database - very important? Which I would highly recommend you download copies locally should the host cease operations. Or suffer a major failure, to where they cannot restore their server backup snapshots? Which will at least allow you to move the entire site and content to another host.