Hi Tristan,
No need to feel studid, no need to spend money and no need to code!!!
RSS is ALL good news. I don't have time to explain what it is, you can Google and find out all about it. But in short, simple Linda form - it's an easier way to build web pages - once set up it kinda like writing an email. Search engines love blogs and your visitors can syndicate the content through RSS.
WordPress is free and sits on your server which is a good way to go if you want a blog to increase your traffic. Many others like blogger.com are hosted at their server but are super easy to set up.