Poll Position: We're Stayin' Put.

The people have spoken, and the people ain't payin' for no U-Haul.

As you guys know, I'm insecure and self conscious not crazy about this site's general design. I fancy myself as bigtime, and using the stock "Rounders" template for the last 18 months hardly screams "bigtime". My general laziness and lack of familiarity with CSS have long kept me from making anything more than occasional minor cosmetic changes to this site. A few months ago, I had a guy help me develop that cool banner image with the necktie that you see above, but that's been the extent of it.

The problem is twofold: I don't like Blogger.com's default templates, and my success with 3rd party custom templates I've found on the web has been sketchy at best. Add in the aforementioned reticence to toy around with the style sheets and I've just been stuck here.

I just don't like the way this site looks, but I can't really do anything about it.

Last week, I had some free time, so I set up a beta site on WordPress.com, which is another Blog hosting site for those unaware. Generally speaking, WordPress templates are far more attractive. However, the service itself isn't as user friendly as Blogger, there are fewer widgets, it's even harder to customize, the migration isn't seamless, and moving would require you guys getting WordPress accounts to establish your own "personas" to leave comments there. The only reason I'd leave under any circumstances is because the site would look better.

So last week I posed the question to you guys: Should I stay, or should I go?

Voting was tight all week, and honestly, this was poll registered the lowest number of votes of any edition of Poll Position to date. This says either of two things: You guys don't care how the site looks, or you didn't care enough to visit the WordPress beta site for the sake of comparison.

In perhaps a preview of November 4th, the incumbent party (Blogger) won 55%/45%. I honestly thought you guys would like the new site more. I can't tell if this has more to do with an aversion to WordPress or a dislike for the new look and feel. Please enlighten me you-know-where.

So, I'm left with a quandary. Move and look dysfunctionally good, or stay and look functionally bad.

In the end though, I came up with a workable alternative: Stay, and renovate.

I've figured out a way of getting some of the visual punch of WordPress, while keeping all the user friendliness of Blogger. If you hate it, vote in This Week's First Poll and tell me. If you wanna expound, send me an email. All feedback is appreciated.

This Week's Second Poll won't make sense if you were out clubbin' Friday night instead of hittin' a Debate Party. Brush up on your YouTubes if you need a refresher. The poll only runs through Thursday, when we'll have another debate to weigh in on, so vote early and often.