You need to register for an account at wordpress.com. You don’t have to get a blog there, you can just register an account. It’s your profile there that will give you the API key which you can use in your own WordPress site.
So finally I think this newbie sees the answer to his question in the the above discussion. To my knowledge, I never got an API key (probably) because I got my WordPress blog through a third party. A few moments ago I tried to get an account by “reregistering” my username at WordPress.com, but I was told that the name was already taken. So do I have to create another name and account? And can I still use that new account API key for my third party hosted WordPress blog that I already have even though the accounts are different?
Your own self-hosted WordPress and WordPress.com have nothing to do with one another. Nothing at all. Your copy of WordPress is yours. It doesn’t magically hook into any kind of network or anything.
WordPress.com is a separate site with separate accounts and separate blogs and such. You can use any username to get the API key and it can be used on any blog you own.
