WordPress, one of the most popular blogging platforms, has release their WordPress 2.0 iPhone app (free in the AppStore). This new version includes enhancements and new features, including the ability to view, unapprove and delete comments on your blog right from within the app, which is especially important for owners of popular blogs who can now keep up with comments while on-the-go. It is worth mentioning that this new version of the app does not come in the form of an upgrade, instead it is a whole new app that has to be downloaded to your iPhone but since it is free who are we to complain?
Once you’ve installed the app, it is easy to set up your blog. You simply launch the app and enter your blog URL and credentials and you’re good to go. Within seconds, you will see your posts and comments appear.
Writing A New Post
Writing a post is a very straight-forward process. The compose screen is broken down into five parts: Title, Tags, Categories, Status, and the Body of the post.
The Categories field, which is optional, is populated by the categories you may or may not have set up on your WordPress blog, so you simply pick one or more. The Status is obviously the status of the post. The options available here are: Pending Review, Private, Published, Draft and Local Draft.
Local Draft means the draft exists only in the iPhone app and has not been uploaded to WordPress, while Draft is the option you want to select if you want your draft to be uploaded to WordPress. Published, as it clearly implies, publishes your post to your blog for the world to see.
On the bottom of the compose screen you have four icons: Write, Photos, Preview and Settings. You can attach as many photos as you’d like to your posts but one annoying thing to me is the fact that it automatically inserts the photos to the bottom of the posts. I wish there was some sort of way to be able to change the placement of the photos to in between paragraphs, for example. This could be accomplished with the help of a visual editor in the app as opposed to having to log in to the WordPress site to manually adjust them.
The Preview, at least for my site, does not load my actual blog theme. Not sure if this is happening to other people, or if this is the way the app works. It gives me a message stating “Sorry, the theme for your blog could not be retrieved. A simple preview is shown below.” This is no big deal, really, since the “simple preview” is pretty much the post sans the blog theme.
Settings, on the other hand, allow you to set a publishing date and time for your posts as well as specifying a password if you want to make the post available only to people to whom you provide the password. I have never tested this option as I haven’t felt the need to write such a private post, but the option is there for those who feel they need and want to use it. Settings also allow you to turn “Resize Photos” ON or OFF.
Pages
If you have different pages set up on your blog, WordPress 2.0 allows you to edit them and even create new ones. When creating new pages, you can leave them in Draft mode if you’re not finished with them, and then return to finish them either on the app or directly by logging into your WordPress blog from the web. Definitely a nice feature to have.
Conclusion
This app has been very solid in my use so far, as was the case with version 1.0. You can add and manage multiple blogs and it is simple enough to use. All in all, I really like this app and for the blogging enthusiast or the serious blogger with an iPhone, this app is a must. Add to that the fact it is free and you have no excuse not to have it. My only complaint is that, as I mentioned above, it would be nice to have a way to change the placement of the images in the posts written with the app. That said, I understand the limitations and realize that it would require some sort of visual HTML editor. Maybe WordPress would bring this to version 3.0?
