Overview
installing wordpress
first step is installing wordpress. there are 2 ways to do it. you can follow the instructions given on the wordpress web site (make sure you create the database first using the hosting control panel or php myadmin, writing down your database username(s), password(s), and database name(s). Or, you can simply use the web hosting control panel script installer to do the job (sometimes called fantastico, or elephante).
record everything you type in in a text file and print that out. usernames, passwords, etc. and make sure the passwords are strong. don't use words in the password, because those are dictionary-crackable.
If you choose to do the manual install, you will need to edit wp-config.php, which if you have never installed wordpress before and are not doing an upgrade, you chould copy from wp-config-sample.php.
there are long hash codes in there that need to be pasted in from the results of visiting a web page.
there are also a number of settings that need to be chosen. you are going to have to get used to editing PHP. sorry. that's life. if you wanted things easier you should just get an account on wordpress.com.
then visit your wordpress blog's /wp-admin/install.php page and wait.
getting tantan-noodles spam filter working
the plugin that is currently offered is broken.
it does not work on the current versions of PHP that are used on web servers.
I have fixed the code and put the simple fixes into a zip file you can download (below) and extract into \wp-content\plugins\ .
don't click the downloads below, pick save target as or save link as. sorry chrome users, you may not have a choice of anything other than viewing. open this file using notepad (or just double-click on the file), do ctrl-A to select all, copy (ctrl-C) and login to wordpress and go into plugins, activate tantan-spam/noodles spam filter. in navigation, click Spam Filter. paste the contents of this file into the filter rules that call for regular expressions. If there is a captcha capability, turn that on also.
I can't remember what the differences in the code were, but I think it was only one line of code where a match() starement was being used when instead its replacement, preg_match() should have been used instead. You can view the code differences using winmerge if you are unsure of my changes. Joe Tan does not seem to ever update his code (write-once-read-many). Pray that he does. He also doesn't respond to emails or bug reports (even if they include the fix).
other plugins
You should unzip the plugins into \wp-content\plugins\ and use filezilla to copy those expanded plugins into their place on the web server. login to wordpress admin account by visiting /wp-admin/ and then go to the plugins link in the navigation bar.
activate akismet. it is a spam filter that comes by default with wordpress 3.x.
You should not activate hello dolly. In fact, you can delete it, it's junk.
You should activate all the rest.
Downloads
includes the text file below.
don't click these, right click and pick save target as or save link as. sorry chrome users, you may not have a choice of anything other than viewing. open this file using notepad (or just double-click on the file), do ctrl-A to select all, copy (ctrl-C) and login to wordpress and go into plugins, activate tantan-spam/noodles spam filter. in navigation, click Spam Filter. paste the contents of this file into the filter rules that call for regular expressions. If there is a captcha capability, turn that on also.