"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet."

And so we come, ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages, to the moment you've all been waiting for. In a fiercely contested poll I asked you, the wise and gracious readers of my blog (or, and let's be honest here, more specifically, those random Blog Explosion members who stopped long enough whilst surfing for credits to actually vote) to vote on the new name for my brand spanking new blog. And you did, in your droves, and whilst some options were roundly rebuffed, receiving little or no support, and whilst "Strawberry Fields" was leading the chasing pack by a large margin initially, in the final countdown it turned out to be a close race.

One by one they fell, the margins between each option getting narrower and narrower, and slowly the lead that the Beatles-inspired choice had accumulated was eroded. In the main event it was a fatal four-way between "The Bitter End", "Electric Boogaloo", "The Pontificating Id" and the legendary "Strawberry fields". For days they were inseperable, until finally both "Electric Boogaloo" and shockingly the erstwhile leader, "Strawberry Fields", began to lag behind and were eliminated.

To put you all out of your misery, the winning name, and the name of my new blog, is "The Pontificating Id". It finally beat out "The Bitter End", which was ironically enough the working title for this blog, by 14 votes to 11, a convincing margin. Thanks to all who voted.

My next dilemma is the choice of blogging platform. As I said previously, the whole point behind the move is to look for a category-organised blogging platform, it's essential given the mercurial and multi-faceted nature of this blog. For evolution to take the next step will require categories. Moveable Type, whilst highly recommended, is not an option. It's both too complex and also will require me to pay for hosting and at present that is not only not an option I want to explore, but also one I can't afford to explore. I like Wordpress-based platforms as I can use categories, in a relatively user-friendly environment, perhaps a little more complex than Blogger but I've already outgrown Blogger so I need the next step up.

I've so far located two free, self-hosted Wordpress-based services online (if you know of any others, let me know). These are Wordpress.com and Blogsome. Neither requires hosting, and both will provide categorisation. However Wordpress.com currently doesn't allow template modification, whereas Blogsome does. Whilst Blogsome is using an older version of Wordpress software to function, this actually allows Blogsome to offer template modification with no added security risk to their hosting servers, whereas Wordpress.com are struggling with rolling out template flexibility without risking the security of their servers.

If you can recommend any other category-based platforms, feel free to leave a comment. Otherwise I'd really appreciate a vote on the poll on the left, but only if you've used, or know someone who's used, either platform. Please don't vote if it's not based on actual experience, or based on love for your own platform without having tried out either Wordpress.com or Blogsome.

Thank you.