Towards the end of 2009, WordPress released a second version of their iphone WordPress application. The fully featured blogging application allows you to do a range of tasks with WordPress.org and WordPress.com sites, the most important being: Writing new posts and pages, editing existing posts and pages, and moderating comments. The thought of writing blog entries on my phone isn’t something that really appealed to me, so I wasn’t fast to jump on the WordPress for iphone bandwagon. I have since had a play with the application and here are some of my observations.
Nice features:
- It’s portable (I can’t imagine anyone using this app when they have access to a PC).
- It has a good clean interface, that allows you to easily access multiple WordPress sites.
- It has support to see Gravatars of people who leave comments, this is handy, as spammers don’t normally use Gravatars.
- If you are using a dodgy wireless or 3g connection posts are automatically saved and restored if network connection is lost during publishing.
- If you have multiple sites set up on the app, it re-opens in the site you last used, a nice time saver.
- You can add photos straight off your phone, so if you are a photoblogger with an iphone, this app will be very useful for you.
What else do you need to know?
- The app can be used on any iphone or ipod touch, you obviously need a network connection to make use of it.
- You need to enable XML-RPC from your WordPress “Writing” settings pages for this app to work.
- You can add multiple WordPress.org and WordPress.com sites.
- It’s free and open source.
When would you really use this app?
If you are away from home, and you are the sort of person that updates your blogs often with small updates or images then this app is for you. It would also be very useful for sites that report “happening right now” type events, i.e. sending updates from a conference, or showing an image of something news worthy you have just witnessed. It is also great if you have a blog that gets a lot of comments, and you need to stay on top of moderating them. I have had it installed for about 2 months and I use it from time to time to moderate comments, but I am also not much of a micro blogger, most of the wordpress sites I run have long posts, so it was never my intention to use it to write posts. In summary, a useful app that is free. So why not give it a go?
Rototiller
Good post Simon. Well where can I get this application? I like to install this application on my iphone. Can you help me?
Andrew Keir from logo design
Sounds good, I’m waiting to get my iPhone over the next few days. I’ll have to give this a go.
intermezo from intermezo
this very useful for some one who go out and can not bring a computer, nice posting
steve from portable storage containers millerton
awesome, i just bought a new iphone last week and i love it. I can’t wait to try this
Elle Wood
This will certainly become a huge app. It may even offer a profit center for WordPress if they charge a few dollars for it.
zainuddin
Sounds good, I’m waiting to get my iPhone over the next few days. I’ll have to give this a go.