Welcome to WordPress.com! Here’s a quick look at the plans you can choose from, and a few tips to make sure you’ve covered the basics.

What type of WordPress.com plan is right for you?

At WordPress.com, you can select one of four plans: Free, Personal, Premium, and Business. All of our plans have the primary features that make WordPress.com so awesome: a growing collection of well-designed themes, basic customization, and unlimited bandwidth. Plus, you don’t have to worry about hosting, security, backups, or software updates — ever. We take care of all of that for you.

If you’re not sure what’s right for you, you can always bump up to a paid plan in the future. Note that if you’d like to upload third-party themes and plugins, you’ll want to choose the Business Plan.

Handy tips for setting up your account

Use a strong password. Your security is really important to us. As with all of your online accounts, please use a strong, unique password to log into your WordPress.com account. This post on creating a strong password — and why you should care — is a good primer.

Choose a web address, title, and tagline. Your site’s web address is like the address to your online home — it’s where visitors can find you. When you register, you’ll receive your own unique wordpress.com address (such as example.wordpress.com). But some people like to nix the “wordpress.com” part. (It’s fine, our feelings aren’t hurt!) If you’d like to do this, you can buy a custom domain name, like example.com, as long as it’s available.

You can read more about your web address, and learn how to change it in the future, if necessary. Note that your web address and site title can be different, and if you’d simply like to edit your site title, go to My Sites → Customize → Site Identity. Here, you can also update your tagline — this post offers tips on creating the perfect phrase.

We’ve asked a number of users how they selected their blog names, from Paper and Salt to She’s a Maineiac. They give great advice, and this post on site name inspiration offers more ideas.

Set up your public profile. Updating your public profile isn’t mandatory, as some people prefer to blog anonymously. But do fill in these details if you’d like to establish your identity. To edit your public profile, click your Gravatar in the top right-hand side of the screen to head to My Profile. When you comment on sites across WordPress.com, this is the information associated with your account.

Be sure to upload a Gravatar, which is the thumbnail that appears next to the comments you make across WordPress.com. It’s the primary image that people will associate with you. Not sure which image to choose? Here are some tips on choosing a Gravatar.

If you’ve updated these general settings, you’ve covered the basics. (Virtual) high five!