on the appearance of my blog

I am sure you will find all the answers for your questions here: Getting_Started_with_WordPress

As I was reading New To WordPress – Where to Start, I encountered something I don’t understand:

After installing WordPress and going through the following process step-by-step, consider making your first plugin installation the Codex and Forum Searcher Plugin (https://asymptomatic.net/wp/2005/07/20/1765/codex-searcher/).

I went to that site and there were no clear instructions. I don’t know what a plug-in is, yet you assume that I do.

Your rss feed does work.

I mean your rss feed doesn’t work.

Plug ins are “extras,” ways of extending the way wordpress works. Because WP is open liscensed software, anyone can develop extra functionality for it. Some plugins are just for fun — for example, I use one that creates random taglines for my site. Others are pretty important, such as akismet, which helps protect your site from spam.

The plugin above is one of those I don’t think is very neccesary, so don’t worry about it. All it does is make it so you can search these forums directly from the admin page of your blog. If you don’t mind actually coming to this site each time you have a question then it doesn’t need to be installed.

If you downloaded the latest version of WP you should already have a few plugins — Akismet, database backup and I think Hello Dolly.

There are thousands of articles on the codex and most of your questions, such as “What is a Plugin?” can be answered there.

Which plug-ins let me make my blog look the way that I want it to look?

And is anybody doing anything about the RSS feed for this thread? It doesn’t work.

I attempted to download per-post styles under plug-ins/styles, and I got this website https://www.blindmuse.com/blog/2004/05/27/per-post-styles/ and there are no instructions on the website on how to download the plug-in. I clicked the link that is supposed to be the plug-in, but all I got was jibber-jabber. This is a terrible experience. Doesn’t anything here make sense? Doesn’t anything here work?

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all this stuff. I would not worry about plug-ins right now. It seems you very much want to personalize the look of your blog. You can do this yourself, by tweaking one of the themes that came with WordPress. You can go here https://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/graphicalcss/ for some useful info on how you might get started with that. That can be a bit daunting though, especially if you’re already feeling overwhelmed by WordPress.

A better option for you might be to try and find an already existing theme that is close to how you’d like your blog to look, and start by using that. There are a lot of great themes out there. Try looking here https://themes.wordpress.net/ for a good start, and there are many other sources to find nice themes. If you find one you like, you can then get your blog started at least, and then think about making other changes, like adding plug-ins.

I hope that helps you a little bit at least. I know it’s frustrating when you first start and have no idea what you’re doing (I’m not too far past that stage myself!) . Good luck!

The plugin from blindmuse is dated 2004 and may well not work with the latest code.