Blog & Ping Recommendation

I am new to Wp and blogging. I have been reading about it for a long time and finally decided to give it a shot. I have read in many places of the dangers of the automatic blog & ping and don’t want to do it. Particularly while I am initially setting up my blog. I searched this forum and was surprised to see that this topic hasn’t come up before.

How time consuming is it to manually blog and ping? I don’t see it as being too time consuming. Of course I haven’t tried it yet.

Any hints or tips is appreciated.

Thanks,
Zeek