Should I join wordpress.org?

wordpress.org is the hosted version of wordpress.com blog. you most defiantly want to do wordpress.org if you want customize it and us all of the plugins for it. you can get a .com domain for 10 bucks a year and hosting as little as 3 bucks per month from reliabox.com in the source i included a blog post on how to movie from wordpress.com to wordpress.org which you might find helpful for the general idea of what you are looking for in a host and the advantages of wordpress.org