might not be able to answer all but i'll try my best:-
1. Wordpress have very nice available themes you can get out there but i don't find it as user friendly as compared to Blogger. Never really get my hands dirty with Wordpress, i believe they used to charge $$ if u want to edit the .css (theme template) of the theme. Somehow with Blogger I can do pretty much alot and there are quite a number of converted Wordpress to Blogger themes too.

2. What do u mean by free hosting? u mean those hosting with 'x' GB HDD space? Do u really need those? Currently Blogger/Wordpress offers free blogging hosting and i kinda like to keep it in the cloud, feels safer....like mine I purchased a domain, e.g. dailyboutique.com and set it to point to Blogger's platform ... so indirectly its still free and running behind Blogger

3. Hmmm sorry can't help much since its wordpress...

4. Search Engine Optimization, try googling about it and u'll get alot of info...in a nutshell, its how to optimize ur blog/site for search engine to index it so that it'll appear higher in terms of page rank, better accuracy, etc.

5. Shoutout box? I believe there are few out there, e.g. cbox.ws is one of them...just copy the html code and embed it into ur sidebar...

6. Gotta check with wordpress users...might need to pay additional for changing to other themes or might need to pay to edit the .css

7. Nuffnang is our local ads aggregator, they display localized ads mainly from Malaysia. I believe to quality for Nuffnang, u might need to have at least 10-20 unique visitors per day before they assign ads to ur blog...

8. It's best to always check the HTML code...cuz the HTML code will never lie...at times the editor will convert certain things wrongly for u...for e.g. they might add alot of break spaces...best is to verify the HTML...