WordPress: Should I Switch?

Problems with Blogger

For the entire life of this blog, it's been hosted with Blogger. Blogger currently lacks many features:

1. categories
2. more themes
3. more add-ons
4. comment feeds
5. friends-only posts
6. quick template changes

Is this just a rephrasing of "What's new in Blogger?" for the new Blogger Beta being rolled out? Nah...

Okay, so maybe it is. Blogger is promising to fix these things in their new Blogger Beta. But what new "standard" things will develop outside of Blogger, and will they be just as slow to adopt changes again? A specific annoyance with the Beta version is their support of categories -- "labels," actually -- do not allow for sub-categories, so far as I can tell. And I want to add a calendar navigation, which looks too "out there" for Blogger to consider adding.

Another Option: WordPress

So I'm very seriously considering self-hosting WordPress. I've heard very good things from the blogosphere about its customizability. People also rave about its available themes, though I'm a little less impressed on that front. I'm not afraid of rolling my own themes or significantly modifiying an existing one, though, so that's not a big deal.

The themes I looking at for starting points are, in order of my own preference:

1. shiny rounded corners (I would probably change the color to blue)
2. less shiny rounded corners (I would replace the red with something else)
3. blue and gray, minimally rounded (I'd do something different with the banner)
4. simple blue
5. simple white (I would definitely be changing the photo)
6. simple gray (I would probably change the color to blue)

Now accepting votes! :) If any of the above themes that don't resize well, I'd fix them so they do.

If anyone's got experience -- positive or negative -- about switching from Blogger to WordPress, importing content, or setting up WordPress on your own server, I'd love to hear from you.

When?

I'm holding back on switching until after I move back to SLO and get internet set up at my new-old apartment. But after that, you may see changes around here. If it doesn't happen before the start of fall quarter, though, then I can't give a reliable ETA on site migration until I see what my courseload is going to be like.

Categories: blogging