Trouble is – the old version of WordPress Mobile Admin didn’t have any of the human readable text wrapped in those functions so it was only available in English, despite the fact that probably 95% of the text it used had already been translated. By going through and wrapping those text segments has meant that the entire Mobile dashboard has been mobilized.

Internationalization was where we spent most of our time on for this release, but it wasn’t the only focus. In addition, we’ve looked at textarea boxes and in particular, anywhere you can enter text in the mobile dashboard – editing posts and pages for example.

We found that some phones have troubled scrolling with lots of text in text input boxes (iPhone’s for example), so we’ve added some JavaScript in to help things run a bit smoother. And because we’re using Wapple Architect, phones that don’t support JavaScript don’t get it.

We hope you enjoy the update to the plugin and would love to hear from you if you use WordPress Mobile Admin in a language other than English and if you use an iPhone and scrolling is a bit nicer!

Last month we published a new mobile plugin to the wordpress.org plugin repository called WordPress Mobile Admin. It won’t surprise you to hear that it does exactly what it says on the tin and mobilizes your WordPress control panel.

Prior to creating the plugin, we canvased a number of power mobile bloggers and asked their opinions on what features would be useful in a mobile plugin. We didn’t want to completely re-create the WP dashboard on mobile, but rather create a dashboard with features that would only be appropriate whilst you’re using your handset.

Top Features

It became pretty obvious that creating posts, being able to upload photos and moderate comments were the most popular requests, so they were installed as the top priorities and implemented pretty much straight away. Another top priority was to make the mobile dashboard look and feel like the web dashboard as much as possible as we wanted to keep the user experience as consistent as possible. The theory being that if you’ve used the WordPress control panel on web, you should know where everything is on mobile without having to look around too much.

And with those tasks done, the plugin was released. Job done – well, almost..

Upgrades and downgrades

As with any software, there are plenty of bug reports, feature requests and performance upgrades that all require implementing – so after collating them all, they were entered into Trac, were prioritised and worked on.

One of the most interesting feature requests that came in was for the mobile plugin to work on PHP4. We’ve always made it a requirement in our plugins (not just wordpress) that you had to have SimpleXML and as this came as standard with PHP5 – you needed this too. But we found an awesome class on phpclasses.org called SimpleXML for PHP4 by Taha Paksu, that with a little tweaking, did the same job as the native SimpleXML functions.

By wrapping the class creation in a function called “simplexml_load_string” (and wrapping that inside a if !function_exists(‘simplexml_load_string’)), we’d got SimpleXML functionality with PHP4 – result!

In addition to this, we’ve added features so you can manage your tags and categories on mobile as well as create tags inside posts – all in the same way you’d do on web. We’ve also replicated the admin colour scheme switcher so if you prefer the Blue theme to Gray, you can display that on your phone!

Cutting to the chase – here is the list of features and new functionality that have been bundled into version 2.0.

New Feature list

• Removed dependancy on simpleXML – now works with PHP4
• Footer now present on Login page – frames page nicely
• Added edit post tags page
• Added delete/add post tags
• Added edit categories page
• Added delete/add categories
• Added customized colour schemes
• Added ability to edit tags when adding/editing a post
• Bug fix: Show correct number of posts on edit posts page
• Bug fix: Fixed pingbacks on comments page

No more dependancies

What this means is that we’ve been able to completely remove the “Things you must have..” section in the readme file for WordPress Mobile Admin. All dependancies have been removed and another barrier to mobile has been removed! We’re going to be rolling out the same PHP4 upgrades across all of our other plugins – keep an eye out for those if you’ve been waiting for that feature!

If you want to check out the new version of WordPress Mobile Admin for yourself, head over to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mobile-admin/ and download it. Alternatively, if you search for “wordpress mobile admin wapple” in the Add New Plugin section on your own WordPress control panel, you can install it automatically.

If there are any other features you’d like to see in the next version, leave a comment and let us know!

WordPress Mobile Admin is a fully featured WordPress control panel for your mobile. It works on every device – no matter what it’s capabilities, so it doesn’t matter if you don’t have an iPhone or BlackBerry, you can still manage and update your blog whilst you’re on the go.

It uses Wapple’s advanced web services to produce perfect markup whilst at the same time maintaining the familiar look and feel of WordPress. You can write and edit posts, moderate and reply to comments as well as updating and managing tags, categories and pages.

WordPress Mobile Admin

Requires at least:2.6
Tested up to: 2.9.2
Stable tag: 2.5

Features

• Add new posts from mobile
• Post pictures from your mobile phone and dictate where they appear on the post
• Post, Page, Tag and Category Management
• Comment Moderation – including replying to comments
• User Profile page – including colour schemes
• Support for gravatars

This plugin uses the same technology as the Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin and if you like this plugin, you’ll love that one. Check out the home page here: Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin for WordPress

Installation

1. To install through WordPress Control Panel:
   • Click “Plugins”, then “Add New”
   • Enter “WordPress mobile admin” as search term and click “Search Plugins”
   • Click the “Install” link on the right hand side against “WordPress Mobile Admin”
   • Click the red “Install Now” button
   • Click the “Activate Plugin” link
   • Enter your Wapple Architect dev key into the settings page. You can get one from here Wapple Dev Key Registration
2. To download and install manually:
   • Download latest version from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mobile-admin/
   • Upload the entire `wordpress-mobile-admin` folder to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory.
   • Activate the plugin through the `Plugins` menu in WordPress.
   • Enter your Wapple Architect dev key into the settings page. You can get one from here Wapple Dev Key Registration

Download Plugin .zip

The control panel of WordPress Mobile Admin is in `Settings` > `Mobile Admin`.

If you want to use the WordPress Mobile Plugin with WordPress MU as a site-wide plugin, install the “wordpress-mobile-plugin” folder in the plugins directory and activate on a site-by-site basis.

Frequenty Asked Questions

How do I get a dev key?

Head over to Wapple and fill out the simple form, you should be able to get your dev key within a couple of minutes!

Why doesn’t the plugin work? I see the web version on my mobile!

Have you entered your dev key into the Wapple Architect settings?
If not, head over to Settings > Wapple Architect (or Options > Wapple Architect if you’re on version 2.3.3 and under) and enter it into the “Dev Key” input box.

Do I need SOAP and SimpleXML running for this plugin to work?

In older versions of the plugin, you needed SOAP and SimpleXML, but not any more! From version 2.0, the dependancy on SimpleXML has been totally removed! You also do not need SOAP and can communicate with Wapple’s web services via REST.

File Uploads seem to be breaking my site

On some handsets on certain networks, file uploading doesn’t work. Even though the mobile phone supports it, it doesn’t like it. If you find you’re having problems with posting, head to “Dashboard”, then “Profile” and turn it off for your user.

Screenshots

Changelog

• Version 2.5
  • Added option to choose what size of mobile uploaded image you want to use in your posts
• Version 2.4.1
  • Fixed bug with foreign chars on comment titles
• Version 2.4
  • Fixed bug with guest users getting wrong message when trying to view categories
  • Fixed issue with adding posts in a different timezone to the where the server is
• Version 2.3
  • Fixed bug with some sites logging on, removed filter for login and authenticate
• Version 2.2
  • Added switch to mobile/desktop option in footer
• Version 2.1
  • Fixed warning message when no result back from web service call
  • Added compatibility for WordPress 2.9
• Version 2.0
  • Removed dependancy on simpleXML
  • Works with PHP4
  • Footer now present on Login page – frames page nicely
  • Added edit post tags page
  • Added delete/add post tags
  • Added edit categories page
  • Added delete/add categories
  • Added customized colour schemes
  • Added ability to edit tags when adding/editing a post
  • Bug fix: Show correct number of posts on edit posts page
  • Bug fix: Fixed pingbacks on comments page
• Version 1.2.1
  • Fixed bug when web theme has dynamic style sheet and loads up various functions
• Version 1.2
  • Added bulk actions to comment moderation
  • Added post date to add and edit posts
• Version 1.1.1
  • Fixed bug when there is an admin path that isn’t in the top level
• Version 1.1
  • Added filter posts by type on posts page
  • Fix for really long comments
  • Added option to enter a post excerpt
  • Fixed image post size issue
  • Added compatibility with older WordPress versions
  • Added compatibility with WordPress 2.8.6
• Version 1.0.4
  • Fixed foreign chars bug
• Version 1.0.3
  • Added compatibility with WordPress 2.8.5
• Version 1.0.2
  • Fixed compatibility issue when you don’t have PHP5
• Version 1.0.1
  • Fixed admin bug
• Version 1.0
  • Post images from mobile
  • Comment moderation
  • Post editing
  • Gravatar support