Thread: Writing journals and blogs

Here's hoping this hasn't been done to death before. It's quite a specific query, but if there's been a thread about this somewhere else, please do link me that way. :]

The situation is this. I write odd bits of short stories, stuff I wouldn't ever publish -- not those bits, anyway, though I might consider using the characters or world set-ups in a longer piece someday. I don't know yet. Not the point. The point is, I write these bits and pieces for prompts, competitions (posting only after the deadline or if it's stated it's okay to do so, etc), challenges, whatever else, and I pop 'em on my writing journal for feedback and to amuse other people. Well, I'm hoping on the second point, but y'know.

Said 'writing journal' is a LiveJournal account separate to my own personal LJ. The tags system is handy; I have tags like "[canon] Perfect Rose" or "[featuring] Ira Quinton" or "[length] 1k-5k", etc, so readers can skip to something that interests them. Its purpose is more to post actual fiction than discuss writing, but the problem is largely with scope and readership. LJ is a fairly specific platform and certainly not the most professional thing out there; it also doesn't allow comments except by users who have an LJ or OpenID account. So I'm considering moving, and I would appreciate your feedback, fellow writers.

Here are the questions:

1. What blogging platform (note: free is preferable!) would you advise that would allow me to tag things in great detail, 'cut' posts (with a "Read more" link, kind of thing), and permits commenting by anybody who comes by who fancies giving me their feedback? I'm quite liking Wordpress for its professional feel and general set-up, but I have one or two niggling worries and I'm very open to other suggestions. I'm thinking a blogging system is the way to go rather than a website (free ones, in my experience, tend to look awful and be ad-swamped anyway), because that way the tagging system and whatnot is already set up for me -- but as I said, if you have better ideas, I am open to them.
2. If and when I do swap over, would you suggest updating the old writing LJ and using the new blog as a mirror site? Or abandon the LJ and just use the separate blog? Or post just fiction to the LJ, as I do now, but post both fiction (mirrored) and writing discussion/life-as-a-writer/information etc on the non-LJ writing blog?
3. Am I completely nuts for even thinking about this, and/or do you have a better idea or different suggestion?

If you've got any experience with a writing journal or writers' blog, I would love to hear it. I'm also completely up for this thread derailing into a more general discussion of the pros and cons of writers' blogs, so have at it!

If seeing my current writing LiveJournal would help, it's here. Of course, if you have an LJ you're welcome to comment on anything that's there, but I'm not linking it for free feedback at all -- just so you can get an idea of what I'm on about, in case (as is often the situation) I haven't been very clear about the set-up and my intentions.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions, assistance or anecdotal evidence you've got -- it's much appreciated!

1/ Wordpress has a professionnal look, a lot of people are using them but there are a lot of spammers there! You'll need to protect very well your blog. There are a lot of templates for Wordpress, some are free but you must paid if you want the best. I already use WP, i very like it because it has a lot of templates, plugins, ect, and you can modify your blog like you want!
There is another blog platform very known: Blogger. It's easier to set up but there are not many templates and you can't change everything like in WP. But it's good because there are munch less spammers and your blog is already protected by Google, so no virus, no bugs, ect...