Nov 24, 2008

With the use of the iPhone and iPod Touch growing every day, maybe it makes sense to have a special view of your blog optimized for their included browser.

My blog as seen through WPtouch

The iPhone and iPod Touch web browsing feature is pretty neat (from what I’ve seen), yet a full sized blog site is still a bit hard to see even in horizontal mode.

Enter WPtouch.

WPtouch formats your Wordpress blog with an iPhone specific (and reminiscent) theme, complete with Ajax loading articles and effects. The theme only appears to users who are viewing your online masterpiece from an iPhone or iPod touch.

Of course, it can only go so far - Flash, etc still won’t work on the iPhone.  Shame on you two, Adobe and Apple.  Can’t you work your crap out and stop screwing up the world this way?

Anyway, I digress.  Installation of WPtouch is a snap: simply upload the plugin folder to your webhost and enable it from Admin’s plugin screen.  After it is enabled, you can cruise on over to the Admin Settings -> WPtouch screen to set the various options that the theme supports.  Settings include the icons you want the theme to use verification of certain compatibility issues with the plugin’s capabilities.  Once you are satisfied, simply save your options to fully enable the new theme.

Easy-peasy.

Taking your new look and feel for a spin however is a different matter completely.  While there are some iPhone emulators out there, only one that I know of semi-accurately mimics the actual web browser by making an iPhone User Agent setting available.  This is essential to actually see the changes that WPtouch makes to your blog.

The problem is that to use the accurate emulator requires using a Mac.  If you happen to be one of the enlightened few (haha, cool your jets, I’m writing this on a PC!) cruise on over and download iPhoney, a nifty little Mac app that allows you to emulate the iPhone right from your desktop.  You can even “rotate” the phone to see what landscape view looks like.  Pretty neat!

Sorry - PC users need not apply.   If you have nary a measly hunk of Cupertino Lovin’ readily available for use, try iPhoneTester instead.  Not as cool (no user agent switching, etc.), but it gives you an idea of what your regular theme will look like on the iPhone.  Even with this, for the full experience, you’ll need Safari on your PC.  Yes, I did just say that.

Of course, if you are an Apple Fanboy who ISN’T locked into a long term relationship for RIM Blackberry devices and therefore addicted to free-basing their direct push MS-Exchange crack, you can just fork over yer cash and get a darn iPhone.  Lucky buggers.  Last option is to bug one of your cooler friends to let you borrow their iPhone.  Who knows, you may even get a subscriber out of the deal!

Either way, remember that your normal theme will still be the go-to look for all other browsers, so if you surf back to your blog from your normal Firefox, IE or Chrome, it should all look as it did sans-WPtouch.  Only the iPhone and iPod Touch users will see the new theme.  WPtouch even gives them the option to switch back to your normal theme if for some reason that is preferable.

Overall, this is a great idea for a Wordpress plugin and I’m fairly impressed with the apparent quality of the software.  It seems very professional, is easy to use and did what it was supposed to do on the first try.  In my book, that goes a long way, and always will!

I’ll post again with any other info as it become apparent.

In the meantime - a big shout out to Dale and Duane for their great work!

Web Development, Wordpress, Wordpress plugin, iPhone, iPod Touch