I finally gave in. After spending hours trying to simulate behavior on Blogger that was supposedly easy to implement via WordPress and months of silent but growing jealousy of several great Priest blogs, I rerolled Resto4Life as a WordPress blog. There’s a world of difference between the two and here are a few of the things I’ve learned so far:

• You can directly import your posts from Blogger to WordPress … assuming your Webhost has OpenSSL included as part of its PHP install. Mine did not so I had to create a separate blog through the WordPress site, import my Blogger posts to that, and then export them to XML so that I could import them into the WordPress install on my custom domain. A headache but still a huge time saver over importing each post manually!
• WordPress eats some HTML code. It’s completely borked my item displays! I’ll have to spend some time and effort sorting that out.
• You have to be willing to get your hands dirty to really leverage the power of WordPress. All those shiny plugins and modules that first attracted me to using WordPress don’t install and configure themselves. More so than with Blogger, I’m having to delve into actual code.
• While you may really, really, really love your Season 2 PvP armor, it doesn’t necessarily make for a very inviting web site appearance. One of the reasons it took me so long to get up and running was struggling with a new design based around the Druid’s Merciless Gladiator set. The result, while authentic, was pretty dreary. I finally gave up and applied the colors from my Blogger blog to a more modernized layout.
• Categories are not tags. When you import from Blogger, it automatically converts all your tags to Categories. I think I ended up with something like 60 categories after importing which looked pretty silly. I deleted them all and restricted each post to a maximum of 3 categories out of 15 that I intend to serve as a catch all. I should probably retag all my posts (WordPress allows for both Categories and Tags), but the prospect of rereading and labelling 120+ posts is less than appealing.

I haven’t finished moving in yet and still have a few things to sort out, mostly setting up the WordPress blogroll plugin to display in my sidebar (sorry — I’m working on it), finalizing my layout, and sorting out a few remaining aesthetic glitches. Overall, I’ve been very pleased with how easy it was to make a transition. For those of you out there who have WordPress blogs of your own, do you have any sagely advice to share with me? Are there any plugins you would recommend?

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The two classes originally listed as “Primary” Healers, we vie for group spots, raid spots, cloth drops, and the Taunt/Growl cooldown of our raid tanks. In all the years of fierce competition between Druids and Priests, however, never has an issue of such weight, such consequence been brought to bear…

Why do Priests choose WordPress but Druids choose Blogger?

(Not so) Mortal Combat!!

Don’t believe me? Check out the holy trinity of Priest blogs: Egotistical Priest, Priestly Endeavors, and Holy Light. All WordPress! Even World of Matticus written by a devotee of both the Priest and the Shaman publishes via WordPress! In direct contrast are the Druid blogs: Balance of Power, Big Bear Butt, Laser Chicken, Nurturing Instinct, Of Teeth and Claws, and Tree of Life, all of which are published via Blogger. Even Megan from Out of Mana, player of several level 70 characters including a Druid but nary a Priest in sight has chosen Blogger! What could possibly be the divisive force driving our two platform selections? I attribute this phenomenon to one or more of the following possibilities:

• WordPress offers many more themes than does Blogger.
  
  Perhaps tired of their constant relegation to only being able to wear cloth armor, Priests crave the diversity offered to them by WordPress’s numerous blog templates. Druids, on the other hand, are constantly forced to select from cat, bear, Moonkin, seal, bird, cheetah, and Tree. After a hard day of Powershifting, it’s nice to only have to consider a handful of options for your blog’s aesthetics.
• WordPress themes are typically more elegant and refined while Blogger themes are more universal.
  
  This directly parallels our Tiered Armor Sets. While Priest-specific sets are beautiful and regal, the Druid-specific sets are … brown. And clunky. And while one generally associates robes and long swaths of glistening satin with a Holy Priest or face melter, the Druid sets have to be more universally designed, avoiding looking too much like a restorer’s garb or Tank Girl’s uniform.
• New Blog Authors take a page from the book of those who have gone before.
  
  A Druid who regularly reads Big Bear Butt might be more inclined to use Blogger because it is a solution she has seen in practice. Similarly, a Priest who reads one the Priest blogs is probably more likely to choose WordPress, both because it works and in a subconscious effort to be more readily assimilated by her peers.

I’m not recommending one blogging platform over another. Both have their strong points (WordPress is a great deal more flexible, for instance). For me, I chose Blogger because I enjoy working with Google products and because I had used Blogger for a personal blog in the past. And this isn’t to say that there aren’t and will never be exceptions to the rule. But any Druid caught rolling a WordPress blog will be ostracized until they reroll.

To the other class bloggers out there, what are the reasons you chose the platform you did?

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The article I wrote entitled “Why Horde Always Wins at PvP” was graciously featured on the popular blog site, WoWInsider.com this morning, driving a great deal of traffic my way (thank you, Chris!). While I’m flattered to have been mentioned and happy to have so many visitors, I regret that many people seem to have been offended by the nature of the article. I only hope that some of the more polarized visitors found something else of merit while they were visiting.

You can view the WoWInsider article and the follow-up comments here.

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Inspired by both Vonya and Big Bear Butt, I finally broke down and went back through the entire blog, cleaning up each post. Pictures were added, posts were relabelled, (some) misspellings were corrected, and sourcelinks were converted to the much more modern Link Field method. I also implemented a new feature from Hackosphere that allows me to display a short summary linking to a complete post rather than displaying the entire thing on the front page. The only downside of this method is that it displays “Read more…” links whenever browsing via “View Older Posts” (although not when browsing by Label). Hopefully, all of these changes will make the site more readable and, in turn, more enjoyable!

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In the spirit of Alamo and out of interest in visitor demographics, I put together the poll at right asking you to indicate your current (or most often-used) talent spec. Please select from primarily Restoration, Balance, or Feral builds; a Balance/Restoration hybrid or Feral/Restoration hybrid; some other variant; or “WUT IS DURID LOL?” if you happen to not have a Druid.

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