Wordpress Envy

The grass is always greener, isn't it? When I first signed up for blog space I went with Blogger.  I didn't do a lot of research.  My wife was reading blogs from some of her friends in College Station and they were all using Blogger.  Best of all, it was free.

So, I signed up with Blogger and started blogging away.

For whatever reason, I cannot stay satisfied with my blog layout.  I quickly tired of the standard Blogger templates and started trying out various custom templates.  What I have noticed, is that the best customized blogger templates are actually modified Wordpress templates.

After tinkering with various customized, modified for Blogger, Wordpress themes, I thought I should just get a Wordpress account and try it out.  After all, Blogger is ok but Wordpress is for the serious blogger.

What I found out with my new Wordpress account is that just like real life,  the grass is not really greener.  It's those green envy glasses that make everything else look so green.

Wordpress (the free Wordpress.com version) did have some nice clean and professional looking templates but the variety was not as plentiful as I expected.  However, what really got me is that you can't just open up your template and modify it however you want.  I've spent a lot of time at Blogger Buster and now I'm spoiled.  I have to be able to tweak my template to make it unique.  My current template at Seeking Above is an extremely modified Cool Blue 2.0 template from Blogger Buster.

So, my Wordpress account just sits unused.  I might do something with it someday just to learn it better.  However, I really don't have time for experimenting right now.

All this said, there is one feature in Wordpress that I truly wish we had available in Blogger.  I really wish we had the static Page feature.  It took me awhile to figure out how to fake this in Blogger by using a back dated post pages.  However, it's really not the same.

I'd love to have this feature to add additional web pages to my site.  I could set these pages up to be in the same theme as my current blog but look and behave more like a static web page.  Off the top of my head I would replace my "Who Am I" and "Testimony" pages with these static pages.  However, I would also like to build some additional resource pages with widgets and links that I don't necessarily want on my homepage sidebar.  Maybe I'd start my own customized template download page.

I'm sure there are at least of dozen or more creative uses for these "pages" if only Blogger had them.  I don't even see it listed as a possible future option on the Blogger Wishlist.  Sometimes the grass still looks greener.