I am in the process of setting up a WP website. I'd like it to have a home page with a menu for portfolios and a link to a blog. I want to keep it extremely simple. Any advice on how to begin?
First, find sites that work the way you want yours to work. Here's my site:
http://www.kasson.com/That's a site that does what you said you wanted. (Although there are two blogs, not one). Does it lok like what you want?
Next decide how much effort you want to put into your site. If not effort, then money for consultants. Typically the more of one or the other, the more flexibility in the design and the greater reliability of the hosting.
After that, see if one of the turnkey services (hosting/templates/galleries all in one) will do the job you want done.
If not, look at packaged WordPress themes like the Genesis ones.
If not, then be prepared to write (or have written) themes (or Genesis child themes).
If you want to follow along with my path to a WordPress site, start here:
http://blog.kasson.com/the-last-word/a-new-web-site-requirements/Jim