If you really want to simplify things you can just start a free site at weebly.com. All you'd have to do is register at the site, set up your website there, and then point your domain at weebly's nameservers. It's really drag-n-drop easy to customize your site with Weebly's interface. You can take a look at my current website, it's hosted for free on Weebly.
The thing is though, your site is still hosted with Weebly, so you won't have as much control over it. I don't see it as a long term solution, it's just there so I can have a web presence while I'm working on some other stuff. I'm planning to move to a self-hosted Wordpress site sometime soon myself. It does seem kind of complicated when you first start out, but like any skill you get the hang of it once you've had some practice.
Regarding hosting, personally I've had a great experience with Uberhost.net. The support is
excellent (there's almost always someone there on Live Chat support, usually Rick who I think is the owner, and he can fix any problems you have himself, technical or otherwise), and I haven't had any problems with them whatsoever.
If you're looking for a sort of middle-of-the-road solution, not free hosting but not fully managing your own website either, I would look into Slade Roberson's
recommendation of LivingDot.com. They have installation and configuration of your blog included with their price, and according to Slade their customer service is phenomenal.