Review: Wordpress

Overview Busy blogger, always on the go... moving from bedroom to living room, to kitchen, maybe out to Taco Bell if there's nothing appetizing in the fridge. Okay, okay... successful bloggers really are on the go, attending press events and other things in cities all over, needing to update their sites as events unfold. Before now, bloggers had to flock to the nearest WiFi connection to do that... thankfully, Wordpress for the iPhone is here to change all that.

Bloggers, you're about to meet your new best friend. Functionality Enter WordPress, and choose your blog. If you haven't registered one with your iPhone, the setup is as painless as signing in. Tap in your blogs' URL, your name and password, and hit save. You can do this for multiple blogs, so if you're like me and you write for a bunch of different places, or run a bunch of different blogs, this is perfect. Once you're in, there are a number of different things you can do to your blog. First, try writing a new post. While doing it, you can save it as a draft, and preview it in Safari, so you know how it would look right now. You can also edit a post, whether it is a draft or published. Password protection of posts and drafts is available, as well.

In addition, you may insert images into your posts by pressing the photo button on the bottom of the editor screen. You have the option of inserting a picture from your phone's camera roll, or you can take one right there, on the spot, to insert. For people blogging about an event, that's priceless.

There are some glaring omissions from the Wordpress app, however. First, the app is especially hurt by the lack of copy and paste capabilities on the iPhone. Another app that supports Copy & Paste should be hitting the App Store shortly, making you wonder if its a feature other developers (or Apple?) might incorporate soon. In addition, one has to know HTML if they want to format their posts at all, because unfortunately, there is no toolbar for visual WYSIWYG editing, like I'm looking at right now as I enter this in Wordpress. That makes things difficult, though for breaking news posts, it shouldn't be too big of a deal.

Another issue is the lack of some of the functions that make Wordpress such a powerful and convenient blogging tool in the first place. Users are unable to track their blog stats, or incoming links; nor can they manage accounts and users or comments. It's impossible to update the blogroll or the template, either. Most of those things are available to do in Safari, so it's not the world's biggest loss, but certainly, a more complete version of Wordpress for the iPhone will hopefully include all these important aspects down the line. Review Wordpress for the iPhone is a terrific first step towards totally integrating blogging into the world of cell phones. For so long, bloggers without a laptop and a WiFi connection were naked, unable to post their breaking content. Now, that terrible fate is a thing of the past, and users can even correct the mistakes they made in other, older posts, as well. Of course, as I said earlier, there are some glaring omissions from this version 1.0, and they keep the application from really being the most awesome program in the world. But here's the thing: if you're a blogger using Wordpress, it still provides a most essential service that you won't get anywhere else. Summary Version 1.0, perfect for on the go bloggers who need to update their site, but have a homebase to really customize and do all the other work that comes with having a blog. But it's a great first step, and an invaluable tool that, until today, was not available in any shape or form. Bloggers should rejoice, and look forward to future iterations of this program.

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