Spijker, I understand the differences between the two. My problems were not with an ISP, but with Wordpress itself, specifically their less than adequate CS at the time, which was for the free site. All this was some years ago and CS may have improved by now. I truly hope it has.
I am not the most technically minded person and many seemingly simple tasks in setting up the damn thing were beyond me. I send the Wordpress CS two carefully written emails in which I tried to explain my problems as clearly as I could. Their responses, after some delays, were pleasant and polite but vague, and reflected a "well, it's free, you should move up to a paid site" attitude. Fair enough, I thought. Possibly I was expecting too much for a free site. Ours is after all a capitalist system based on profits and the dollar rules.The free lunch philosophy applies.
Unhappy with what I had, I reconsidered my options, found a new provider and moved on, initially to a free basic site and eventually to a paid site with the new ISP. CS for both was excellent. I ran the second site for several years but no longer have it, for reasons not really relevant to this discussion.
Other than mentioning Wordpress which is the subject of this thread, I prefer to leave names out of my thread. There are many site providers and with a little online research one can easily find oneto suit most requirements. Bearing in mind that free is free, and champagne tastes on beer budgets are not really compatible.
I agree with Patrick Robert James that maintaining Wordpress was (and may still be) a right royal pain. Perhaps all such sites are. As a practicing architect, I very quickly determined that for my own requirements the best option was to cough up the bucks and move up to my own site, professionally set up and maintained, and did so. Oddly, thanks to good insider connections in the profession and the assistance of a programmer friend who understands visual design, this cost me far less than I had expected.