Wow! What a read.
I've been a full-time blogger for a few years and have been very much against free blog sites like Wix because they don't really provide any real value for a blogger.
This is because an account comes with restrictions and usually involves overpriced upgrades if you want to make it a fully functional website.
They are very much designed for a casual blogging audience, and their upsell is quite direct. Basically, the bells and whistles make you feel like you are a blogger, even though you aren't.
Contrast that to Steemit where I believe we see ourselves as creating quality writing worthy of living on the blockchain forever.
Real writers don't need bells and whistle to write quality words, in fact they need less distractions.
Now the Steem blockchain has plenty of interfaces you can use to make the experience easier, but we aren't creating unique blogs here, but rather contributing to one gigantic blog. And keep in mind the blockchain has limitation of what can live there.
Typically, we just save words and formatting (markdown language) so when you introduce wigets and plugins you are limiting those writers to the interface it was created on. Making it less decentralized IMHO.
I see Steemit more like Wikipedia, Medium and Quora, and you'll notice each of those interfaces are clean and uncluttered.
We are not trying to become another Wordpress.com or Wix but rather a repository for information.
But that's my position, coming from a real bloggers perspective. As a blogger I would continue to use Wordpress.org and use the newly developed STEEM plugin as an integration long before considering setting up a real blog on STEEM.
As only when you have your own blog/website do you have total control of it's direction.