How to start using WordPress on your phone or tablet

Download and start using the WordPress mobile app to be more efficient in posting to and moderating your blog.

The WordPress app is free and lets users write new posts, edit content and manage comments. The app is available for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and iPad.

Can I use my personal smartphone or tablet with the app?

Yes.

Can I use my work smartphone or tablet with the app?

Yes.

How do I download the app?

  • For Android users: you can search for "wordpress" in the Android App Market. You will need a Gmail account to download apps (free or paid) from the Android Market.
  • For iPhone and iPad users: search for "wordpress" in the iTunes App Store. You will need an iTunes account to download apps (free or paid) from the store.
  • For BlackBerry users: search for "wordpress" in the BlackBerry App World. You will need a BlackBerry account to download apps (free or paid).

How do I start using the app?

  1. Open the app.
  2. IF you are adding a work-hosted blog, of the options listed, choose "Add self-hosted WordPress blog."
  3. Enter the URL for your blog. Make sure you add the "http://" to the URL.
  4. Enter your username and your password.
  5. Touch Save.
  6. The app will take you to a list of all the site-wide blogs of which you are a member. Choose all the blogs you would like to add. You can also touch the button for "Select All."
  7. Touch "Add Selected."
  8. The blogs will be added to the app.

How do I use the app?

Touch on the name of the blog you want to manage from your list of blogs.

The comments area shows approved and pending comments. Pending comments are shown in yellow. Touch on a yellow comment to review the comment. A button (different for each device) will let you approve the comment, mark the comment as spam, edit the comment or delete the comment. You can also quickly reply to the comment from this screen.

In the posts area you can view published, scheduled and draft posts. You can create a new blog post from this same area. You can start a post and publish straight from the app, or you can start a post and save it as a draft by changing the post's settings.

You can also view, edit and create pages in the pages section.

The stats section is not enabled for Register blogs. To view your statistics, use the Omniture app.

What is the "Quick Photo" button?

This button is only available, for now, for iPhone users.

The button is intended to let you quickly take a photo (you cannot access your library of previously-taken photos), write a quick bit of text and publish quicikly.

Can I adjust the size of photos uploaded from the app?

When in the tabbed view of your blog, select ‘Menu’ -> ‘Blog Settings’, then change the ‘Maximum thumbnail pixel width’ setting to your desired width.

Markdown for Web writing

I started out with a love for Posterous but the glitches, as I encountered on this post, make it unusable.

Instead, see my Markdown example on Wordpress:

http://www.ihamilton.me/?p=43

In short, the beauty of Markdown is that it allows a mobile journalist or any web writer to produce content rich in links using a plain text writing syntax that requires only four additional characters to produce a link. And only one character to quote a paragraph. You can write on any platform but have rich HTML come out on the other side.

The plug in Wordpress is using is Markdown for WordPress and bbPress.

Ideas for using smartphones to report news

Here is a pretty cool Google Docs slideshow on using smartphones to report by Tiffany Campbell, producer, lead for web enterprise, seattletimes.com.
Some highlights from the slideshow:

  • Slide 12: An iPhone photo was used for A1 by the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel
  • Slides 24-32: Livestreaming via smartphone
  • Slides 35-37: Using Posterous for mobile blogging
  • Slides 39-41: Mobile mapping
  • Slides 46-59: Mobile apps for journalists (I'm sure Ian will like seeing Google Voice on Slide 59)
  • Slide 60: Downsides to mobile reporting
  • Slide 61-62: If you cannot read the whole slideshow - be sure to check out these two summary slides
  • Slide 64, 67-70: Tiffany shows great tripods for smartphones - I'm gonna try to get one of these for our newsroom right away!
  • Slide 65-66: Super-helpful battery pack list