Mobile Blogging
I’ve been so busy lately I haven’t been as good as I am about keeping up with The Web and You. In an effort to give myself more flexibility in blogging, I decided to try using WordPress‘ free app (version 2.1) for my iPhone. I tried it because I am hopeful that it will help me to write shorter posts for when I’m on the go or for when I just don’t have time to sit at my computer to write this stuff.
Based on my first impressions, I’m not sure it will help.
The idea is sound: create a mobile blogging platform for people on the go. And the app has access to the more important functions of your blog. But if you’re expecting something that will let you write a full-fledged post with pictures, you’ll be disappointed.
Think text
An important aspect of blogging is making your text scannable by using bold headlines and lists to allow for easier reading. In the mobile app, you need to use HTML tags in order to format your text that way. That’s just plain silly. Even for someone like me who knows his way around HTML, it’s a step backwards from the online app that allows you to edit text much like you would when using a word processor.
Photos/images don’t exactly play well either. Adding an image is easy enough; you simply tap the “Photos” button at the bottom of the screen as you’re editing a post. However, the only thing you can actually *do* with the photos is add them to the bottom of your post. The two I added below are an example of what the app will do with pictures you add via your phone. The example at the top of this post was also taken on my phone, but I had to edit it from the site.
Bugs Galore
More frustrating than anything else, however, is the fact that this app has so many bugs. Just a few things I ran into:
- I had started this blog a few days ago and then left it for a while before returning to it. When I did, I tried to log in to get the most recent draft and I couldn’t access the blog at all. I had to delete and re-create the account info. Draft lost.
- I saved frequently, but found at a certain point that whenever I would leave the draft my most recent work wasn’t being saved at all. I started this “Bugs Galore” section 3 times before I finally gave up and decided to edit on my computer instead.
- When I try to look at some posts via the app interface, I would find that sometimes the draft would take a while to load (which might have been my connection), but in other instances it would be a completely different draft from the one I had selected. There’s also no indicator when something is loading, which would be nice to let people know that the app is “thinking.”
There are probably other bugs that I didn’t discover in the short time I used this app, but the ones I highlighted above are show-stoppers for me. Please do comment on this article if you’ve found other bugs when using this app.
It’s all about Productivity
I wanted to use the mobile app in an effort to make myself more productive when writing blog posts, or at least giving me a new way to write them without having to necessarily sit at my computer. I’m even willing to give up the speed of typing things out on a keyboard for the convenience of anywhere blogging. However, the inability to format text without knowing HTML, nonexistent photo management and a plethora of bugs push this app over the edge for me.
That’s not to say this app is without its uses. If you’re a traveler and update your blog frequently with short posts and pictures of the places you visit, this app might be for you. A key feature is the ability to schedule your blog entry into the future, especially useful if your Blog is set up to automatically broadcast that information to Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. But there are likely other, better ways to do this for mobile platforms, and I wouldn’t download this app just for that functionality.
For now, it will be relegated to the “downloaded, but infrequently used” pile.
I would love to hear suggestions on how you might use this app in spite of its shortcomings. Sound off below!
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