A few posts ago I mentioned that I had installed the new WordPress for iPhone application on my iPhone. I had only posted that one entry from the application since then (only because I was on vacation and got totally engrossed in a couple of books so no time for blogging.) I did start another blog entry with the application but saved it as draft instead of posting it. Since then I’ve had a little more time to look the application so I thought I would put an entry on the blog about it.
This application basically allows you to add and modify your blog posts only. It does not allow you to administer your site or anything like that. You can configure the application to recognize multiple blog sites – fortunately, I have only this one. Yes, you can get the same functionality by just using Safari on your iPhone and accessing the administration pages of your website. However, I like having a dedicated tool for this functionality as you can very quickly start the writing process rather then spend your time getting to your site, finding the right post or create a new one, then scroll all over the place to get things done (yes, yes I do have the mobile interface installed on my site so it’s not THAT bad with a mobile browser.) Besides, once you’ve entered in all the information via a web browser, you have to ensure that you have a network connection so that you can save your new entry. Not so with the WordPress application as you can just save locally as a draft and get access to the entry at anytime.
When you first start up the application you’ll have to configure your site of course. The application will go get your recent posts and download them locally. At that time you can either start adding or modifying existing posts. The application will not allow you modify or add Pages or any thing else than posts. When editing posts, you have the ability to add pictures that you’ve taken with the iPhone’s camera or in your iPhone’s image library. There are number of settings that you can change for your posts – the status of the post, scheduled publishing time/date, blog categories, and password settings. A really great bonus feature here is the ability to preview your entry – ala Live Writer. You post will display in the application as it would on the web using your site’s CSS and theme to display your entry. Very cool.
The only thing I wish was more intuitive is text editor itself. It appears that they are just using the built-in functionally of the iPhone for text editing. I would love to see a more intuitive rich text editor so I don’ have to do any HTML coding.
Overall, I’m very impressed with the application — for what it does, it does it well. For me, it’s the perfect application to use on the road to make quick blog entries.
-JT