Since the Wordpress community understands the dilemma of most bloggers, they have come up with solutions that benefit all the Wordpress users. One example is the use of Wordpress widget. These widget collections enable the users to customize their site without having to go through the coding process. All they need to do is drag a certain widget from the widget area and drop it to the sidebar target content. Easy right?
Almost all WordPress themes Generatepress are built in the following manner an index page and single post template that inserts the header sidebar and footer PHP files. Header files usually have some degree of customization to them, linking to the stylesheet, with custom layout elements for the logo or branding elements. Almost all of the sidebar WP3 themes are the same, while the footer php files also have a bit of customization to them. Changing these files can be fairly easy if you know basic HTML. Just make sure to save frequent backups so that you can backtrack one step in case you make a mistake. You can usually make some basic HTML and CSS structural changes to these files without too much effort.
Yes, you can use other blog sites and still get good ranking, but you typically have to work harder to get the same amount of "love" from Google as your competition. If you already have a different blog and are so far into it that it would hurt you more than help you, just stick with it and MAKE IT WORK. But AT LEAST have it self-hosted - which leads me into my next point.
Self hosted - I have this in my top 5 reasons, well, for read more a good reason. (Oh man I'm witty!) You can use the free version of WordPress and have no problems and make that work for you just fine. But you could run into a few problems, the biggest of which is that your blog could be here one day, and gone the next. If you have a self hosted WordPress blog, no one can touch it. It's yours. Yes, you're paying a small monthly hosting fee (usually around $5.00 or less) but it's WELL worth its value considering the thought that you might lose your blog otherwise.
A paid theme generally comes packed with the features you need, and you just need to pick and choose which ones you want to use. You can then customize them to your needs in a matter of minutes.
There is also another option that will tell you how to install a WordPress theme. Use the built-in theme uploader, which can be accessed directly from the WordPress Administration Panel. Go to the appearance section in WordPress and choose the 'theme' section. Once there, you can click on 'add new them' to get started.