Hosting WordPress

Hey Guys,

I’m sure this has been asked 1,000,000 times before. I just can’t find the info I need.

So initially I signed up a wordpress blog and just had it hosted with a .wordpress.com name. I realized that I wanted to get new widgets and templates and that having it hosted through wordpress.com wouldn’t allow that.

So I signed up for the Essential Plan at iPage.com as it seemed like it was WordPress friendly and got some seemingly good reviews at a pretty good price.

But now I’m stuck. I’ve been able to get my new domain name to simply redirect me to the wordpress site, but its certainly not being ‘hosted’ at this time. I contacted iPage and they suggested to just restart my blog after installing something on their end. I of course, don’t want to restart my blog and want to make changes to the site from my desktop with FileZilla or AceFTP. I suppose I’m just lost. How do I get from having a host and a wordpress blog separately, to having control of my site using FileZilla such that changes (such as adding new templates) can be made?

I’d appreciate any help I can get, and apologies if this question has been on auto-repeat, just with my research I haven’t been able to find exactly what I’m looking for or the explanation was over my head.

Thanks!