Hello World

I've been thinking about blog layouts and design and LiveJournal's strengths/weaknesses as a platform.

Some of the things I like about LJ include:

• The way comments are displayed as threads instead of as one long string.
  
• The built-in community features that make it easy to subscribe to and read lots of journals at once.
  
• The simplicity of selecting one of many layouts, and the limited but versatile customization options (colors, basic layout adjustments, etc).
  
• Cuts (like the one in this post), which make it easy to keep your main page neat and manageable.

Some of the things I don't like about LJ include:

• I can't use javascript in sidebar content.
  
• It's a serious hassle to do any extensive custom coding, since LJ has its own formatting language that you have to learn before you can get into the guts of changing your layout.
  
• Most of the world thinks LiveJournal hosts teenage goth girls exclusively, which does very little to enhance the credibility of anyone who writes here.
  
• No trackbacks, no simple way to see referral URLs, no invisible counter functionality (all of which would be simple for LJ to implement).

I've also got a pretty specific layout idea that LJ definitely doesn't offer me. As far as I can tell, nobody else does, either. ( Here's what I want: )

I'm thinking, eventually, about switching from LJ to something else, although as far as I can tell the only way to get exactly what I want is to code it myself, from the ground up--and, as awesome as I think I am, I'm pretty sure that's beyond my capabilities/free time. Does anyone out there (especially people who operate blogs outside of blogger/LJ) have thoughts or suggestions?