So…the new me!

I mentioned a while ago that I was getting pretty frustrated with LiveJournal.  Everybody knows time has sort of passed them by, but in particular it is ridiculous that they don’t have an integrated search feature!  I also was annoyed with the lack of support for Google Analytics or any sort of page tracking at all.  Those were probably the two biggest problems.

So I got a Blogger account and spent some time getting that all set up the way I wanted it.  I really like how Blogger lets you adjust the style sheet manually if you want to, something that WordPress charges you extra for.  With Blogger I could integrate Google Analytics (you better be able to since they are both Google products!) and of course there is a search feature (again, Google) so I was happy enough about that.  I went back and forth for a long time, but eventually it was clear the only reason I was staying with LiveJournal was loyalty. 

 So I was all ready to make the switch when I discovered that you can’t easily import into Blogger!  I certainly wasn’t going to let all of my old posts disappear!  There were clients you could download to do it, but it essentially amounted to adding all of your old entries and then backdating them.  Kind of annoying. 

Of course WordPress is sort of the hmm hmm hmm of blogging and I kind of always felt deep down inside that a computer programmer aught to be using something a little more complex than LiveJournal.  Really though, the ease of importing is what caused me to make a 90 degree turn at the last minute and set up a WordPress account instead.

So I like the integrated page tracking / analytics from WordPress, the search capability, and I already mentioned the built in import (and export should I change my mind) functionality.  I like the ability to customize the sidebar that I didn’t have with LiveJournal.  I like having the comments on same page as the entry so you can look up and reread it, as opposed to the Blogger style where the comments are on a separate page.  And LiveJournal had the stupid idea to ignore my nice style I spent all that time setting up when you clicked on the post or went to look at the comments!  I also like the idea that with WordPress I can always host my blog in my own domain in the future if I so choose, not just redirect there.

So anyway, here I am!  I don’t have a mood or music setting with each post, but frankly I won’t miss them!  Sometimes it was annoying to try to think of my mood and the whole thing seemed kind of myspacy (although pre-myspace).  I have a lot of options to explore (a lot more than I had with LiveJournal) so I will probably still be tweaking things for a while.

So tell me loyal readers…what do you think?