Go to Settings-Writing and change the default category to a category you want to keep.
http://www.danielwiener.com/is/wp-admin/options-writing.php
You do this because you cannot delete the default category.

Then go to Posts->Categories
http://www.danielwiener.com/is/wp-admin/edit-tags.php?taxonomy=category
In the list of categories on the right, place your cursor over the category and a list of links will appear, including a “delete” link. Click it to delete the category. Once you have deleted the unwanted categories, it should be easier to do what you want to do.

In my attempt to fix things, I did create too many unnecessary categories to which I can not entirely get rid of. I’ve deleted them from the list you see when you hit categories ,but they are still showing up in the drop-down parent menu and when I go to Posts-add new, they are still listed? I deleted my one post with categories checked I didn’t want, so I could start fresh but that didn’t help. Thus when I go to create a new category called Blog I’m still getting blog-2 as a slug. I can’t find how else to get rid of these?

I had the slashes but did have a small typo in permalinks-thanks for catching that.

2) WordPress differentiates between “Pages” and “Posts”. Entries to your blog must be “Posts” not “Pages”.

3) If you already have a category named “blog” just use that.

4) On the right hand side of the “New Posts” or “Edit Posts” screens there is a list of categories. When you create a post, check the appropriate category.

5) I just went to your site and blog-2 is not a category, it is a “Page”. This is not what you want. You should probably delete it.

6) And you have “10×10 Benefit Art Exhibit” as a category. Are you sure you want that as a category? Shouldn’t that be a “Post”.

7) I also think you have set your permalinks incorrectly on the setting page. Go to Setting->Permalink. In “Custom Structure” write /%category%/%postname% – I think you left the slashes out. It should be slash-percentage-category-percentage-slash-percentage-postname-percentage. Got it. I know it does not make sense until you get used to it.
You don’t need to delete. If you wanted to update to 1.6.3 you will need to be able to FTP the files to your site. I have a feeling you are not ready for that.

9) I think you are fairly confused. I think you should read my tutorial more carefully. And read Steve’s tutorial carefully. And read some of the beginning “docs” on WordPress.org http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Lessons. Please don’t take this the wrong way. For the most part WordPress is fairly easy but there are few things that take some learning and some of the instructions are very specific and need to be followed step-by-step, like the relation between categories and posts. Steve’s into to categories is quite good. http://wpfolio.visitsteve.com/wiki/instructions/categories-tags-taxonomies and his instructions on creating a post is also helpful – http://wpfolio.visitsteve.com/wiki/instructions/adding-content

I hope this helps.

You may have to change how you have made your menu. You will want the “News” in the main menu to go to http://mauramcgurk.com/category/news
If you have a problem with this, write again.

I hope this answers your question.

I have a problem which I feel is really basic, but all my searching and reading hasn’t shown me the answer:

In my News category, the posts display as a gallery, in left-to-right columns across the screen. At first, they were just the titles of the posts and that was really boring, so I dressed them up with Featured Images. Which looks better, but what I really want is for the News to be displayed in the blog format–one column which shows the whole post, new posts chronologically placed on top of older ones.

Can you tell me how to change the viewing format of News to a news/blog format instead of what’s currently going on? My site is http://www.mauramcgurk.com.

Thanks!