Today is really exciting, we’re launching MobilePress one of our first components to Project Wolf. It’s a plugin for WordPress, the most popular blogging software in the world, which allows users, designers and publishers to extend their audience and service by having specific themes for specific mobile devices or browsers.
We have a very neat iPhone theme in production, however due to some bugs we have held it back. The iPhone theme available with this release has some minor AJAX enabled on certain pages.
Note: This is not Project Wolf, only a component of Project Wolf. Our launch date for the new product will be announced shortly.
Better late than never huh!?
Plugin looks good and I think it’s a really great idea. The WPTouch plugin has been around for a while and it really does the job well for the iPhone, but other mobile devices / browsers had been left out. So again – the plugin is definitely filling the previous, massive void.
As for mobile theming – I’m not sure that this will take off… I think from a design perspective the mobile devices are too limiting (iPhone excluded) and I thus don’t see space for much innovation here. In my mind, displaying a WP blog on mobile is all about gracefully degrading the design / content. That’s obviously my lil opinion though and I look forward to what the community comes up with regards to the theming.
Very very cool Tyler! Good work!
@Adii
Granted, there may not be a huge market in mobile theming, but the big motivator behind designing it the way we have was to put creative freedom back into the hands of the users/designers. Existing plugins ship with either a) hardcoded theming with sneaky ads and backlinks or b) themes that are not designed according to WP standards. In both of these scenarios there is a lack of standards/consistency. If you, as a designer don’t see potential, it still provides a (hopefully) better platform for you to push mobile content to.
Nice plugin, noticed a couple of minor bugs. Lets hope people start using it as I use my phone for web everyday.
Great plugin guys.
Works like a dream with Opera Mini on my Sony Ericsson!
@MikeY – We appreciate any feedback, and will make an effort to make sure we squash as many bugs as we can for the update.
You should look at putting the browser agent parameters in a config file not code, this way blog owners can download updated config files. This way rather than having to update all the plugin code every time a browser agent string gets updated or added.
@Adii Thanks, I agree and disagree with you. There are better iPhone themes out there and we have one on the way. However, we don’t want to be the designers, we want to enable the designers to do more and offer more. Imagination is the only limitation.
@ChrisM Thanks dude, glad it works 100% for you!
@MikeY Thanks for the kind words, your suggestions are definitely things that came up in our original plans. However, in order to deliver something quickly and that is easy for all users was a priority. Now that we have the plugin out there, we will now look at implementing advanced features and functionality.
Wow…this is pretty cool…mobile is definitely the way to go. Well done guys!
@Tyler – The iPhone is obviously a different ball game and I do look forward to what designers will do for iPhone versions of websites. I’m just of the opinion that other mobile devices (mainly non-smartphones) will be limiting from a design perspective.
@Denham – I hear you 100% and in that regard MobilePress is an outstanding idea; especially once you launch the templating functionality!
@Adii I get what you are saying. It’s a fact, mobile handsets (excl. iPhone) are limited from a design perspective. We’re just hoping that designers see it as an opportunity to give their users something extra.
Congrats man you guys are amaizing. Love the app and fab idea. please send man love to Denham too
You plugin just rocks
This is a really great plug-in, and good on you guys for getting it done. I think it will be used extensively in the near future… Keep up the great innovations! It is one thing to come up with a new idea, but even better when your idea is made reality.
So far so good. I havn’t tested it yet, but from what I read it sounds brilliant. Keep up the innovation and I hope that Project Wolf is also a huge success
Brilliant work guys!
A big heads up also for “due to some bugs we have held it back” it’s good to see you testing it properly before releasing. Even though this product is free you still seem to be putting in a huge effort to make sure it works without bugs. I am impressed, Good job!
A couple questions:
1. I don’t have a cellphone that can render Web pages, so does the plugin offer any ability to show how a blog is rendering? Are there any sites that would do this if the plugin doesn’t?
2. It doesn’t look like any themes are available for this yet, or am I missing something?
Thanks in advance for the help.
Hey Tyler just tried the plugin on the N95 looking great i must say also might try my hands on creating custom themes but one thing , i am using the MightyAdsense plugin which adds adsense ads on the start of the post and these ads show up ! anything you can do to fix that ?
Tyler,
Thanks for this great plugin ! so far i have been trying to play with a custom theme, and for some reason, i cannot figure out how to add the excerpt and a little thumbnail next to each post.
Any help would greatly appreciated…
Thanks a again
First, excellent, excellent offering. Second, I’ve come across an issue on a couple of phones: The blog loads fine, but clicking on any link throws “This page is too large to be shown”. The full version of the blog and subsequent link loads just fine. I had a few friends test it out and nearly everyone had no problems. Any idea where I might start troubleshooting? Or is this a known issue?
Thanks so much. Again, great plugin.
This is an excellent plugin. Thank you very much. I found it does a great job creating a mobile edition for blackberry, windows mobile, opera mini, and symbian mobile devices. For those asking how to test the rendering of web pages, visit this page that lists emulators for several mobile platforms.
However, the plugin did not work for the iPhone. I see the iPhone has a separate theme folder but it’s just not activating for me. I did not change the default option to have the iPhone use the standard browser view. I added ” – Mobile Edition” to my title but it does does not show up on iPhone nor does the iPhone show any difference from a regular desktop browser. If someone has suggestions on where I’m having a problem, I’d appreciate it.
FYI, the default themes have a problem displaying Disqus comments.
Here’s a simple workaround fix. Edit the theme’s css and change “body { background: #333″ to something lighter (e.g., #AAA). This will be specified in either style.css or header.php depending on which of the two default themes you’re looking at.
I got to know about this plugin few days back and I installed it on my blog. The plugin works great. Though the downside is due to adsense or any advertisement code , it make your blog look ugly in mobile. If you are not using any adsense code around your blog posts. This plugin will be very handy to get an extra edge from mobile internet users.
Follow-up on my previous question. I found that my mobilepress plugin does render properly on an iPhone.
I had been using an iPhone simulator at iphonetester.com which does not show the mobile version of my site. The same goes for the sites of all those who have made comments in this forum with the exception of irms. Not sure why his works and the other do not.
However, I figure I should share this in case others try testing their sites on a simulator and do not get the results they expect. Chances are your site does render properly. It’s just the simulator that may not render it properly.