Priority 1:
I want to be able to design my own layout.All blog software allows you to make posts, but a functional blog--IMHO--should also have stable sections that remain the same as the posts change. Thus, a progressive blog would have a list of progressive links that don't change; a blog about dogs would have a list of rescue organizations, etc.
For me, I need to be able to set up that list. I want to be able to decide whether the list appears at the left or right side, or at the bottom for that matter.
I want to be able to use styles to define what parts of a blog show up in various ways. For example, look at these two blogs, both of which are mine:
http://thebeadedneedle.blogs.com/
http://thebeadedneedle.blogs.com/imho/
I am not ecstatic about the way IMHO looks at TypePad, but it's the best I've gotten yet (it's not really live, it's just sort of hanging out there waiting for me to tweak it in case I cannot make Drupal work for me). Back when the CWRL used MT, my blog looked like this: