considering wordpress

i’ve been considering moving to using wordpress as my blog platform.

there are some things i would like to do as far as the website functionality that i just don’t see myself adding to my static site generator.

i want

• a section for permanent essays.
• links to my other blog attempts
• rss / atom feed would be nice.
• comment system
• links to project download area(s)
• posting via email would be nice.
• data export capability.

wordpress alternatives

i’ve been looking at the alternatives to wordpress.com today. in the realm of hosted blogging platforms there are the following:

• blogspot (blogger)
• posterous
• tumblr
• wordpress.com

as far as self hosted possibilities:

• drupal
• jekyll / octopress
• wordpress
• stacyapp

probably self-hosted wordpress gives me the most options as far as the capabilities i want, but i don’t want to deal with the hassle of running my own wordpress install right now.

i’m trying to figure out if wordpress.com is a reasonable place to start with the idea of moving to self hosted wordpress when i want to, or whether the limitations of the wordpress.com platform will make me more frustrated than i want to deal with.