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• Only about 27% of my visitors are using Firefox for a browser. Make the switch! Two cool plugins I really like and am using:
• A weather forecast at the bottom of your browser toolbar.
• Now you don’t have to open IE for that one pesky site that wants IE. Open a site in IE from within your Firefox browser.

So I have officially moved from Blogger (remotely published here) to WordPress’s stand-alone version (hosted on my hosting server). I decided to make the switch since my Yahoo! Hosting was offering it (as well as MoveableType and their 360� blogs) for free, and I felt it had more flexibility and functionality available than Blogger. And I like that it’s Open Source.

Of course, Blogger came out with its new Beta release announcement the same week, after I had started the process. Nice timing. But I’m going to try WP for now, and the new Blogger isn’t active for existing accounts yet.

Some caveats and struggles, for anyone else thinking about making the switch:

• Permalinks - you know, those domain.com/pretty-title-here links? Yahoo Hosting’s version has some problems when you import an existing blog instead of starting from scratch. So, my old ones aren’t working for now. I’m scouring the internet for a plugin to fix this. Should be fine for any new blogs (and new posts), and anyone using WP not on Yahoo! Hosting.
• Tags - This is metadata or keywords to help bloggers and blog search engines to streamline your post’s content. Blogger doesn’t use them as of yet (but mentions “labels” in the beta tour), so I am manually adding them for all 192 posts. It’s not required to use them, but I like the idea and will be glad when it’s all done.
• My RSS Feeds - Right now, I am manually updating my old RSS feeds set up by Blogger. WP gives you entirely new ones which are named differently. I am also looking for a fix for this so I can use both.

Some other reasons I was interested in the WordPress Version 2 Release:

• Password-Protected and Hidden Posts
• Static pages that are not posts
• My blog is becoming more the home page instead of a sub-page, and I’m hoping to put static information here as well and delete my home page. I noticed people using Blogger have had to open up new blogs in order to sub-section information or include static pages with their main blog. Wasted time!
• Subscription list
• Some people like to bookmark and check pages often. I don’t. I encourage people to subscribe to any blog they like using an RSS feeder like Bloglines, but even that may be too techie. WP offers a subscription service so people can get an email about new posts.

If you feel like giving some feedback, go ahead! I am still working on the site, so if you get an error in something, I’m sorry!