So, Daniel has asked me to look into creating a blog for him.

He's got a fairly extensive list of features that he wants, and he wants something he can tweak to his heart's content. (Well, have me tweak to his heart's content.) So, rather than going with a service like Journalscape or Blogger or Livejournal or whatever, I'm going to find a suitable hosting site and install and configure some suitable blogging software.

So, I'm looking at various blogging software packages. The front runners right now are Movable Type and WordPress. Both seem to be powerful enough to do what's needed. Moveable Type seems to have the largest installed base, and might be easier to get advice/tips/tricks/support/anti-spam plugins for. On the other hand, WordPress is open source and totally and completely free in all senses of the word, which both suits my ideological biases and means that the customizeability of the blog would depend only my willingness to get geeky.

On the third hand, my willingness to get geeky, while theoretically boundless, has practical limits. I'm willing to pay a certain amount (both in monetary terms and in a tradeoff of flexibility or features) to have something that just works.

So, anybody out there have experience with Movable Type or WordPress or some other blogging software that they like?