Greetings from within the official Windows Phone 7 WordPress App.
Finally a mobile ability to post on the go without needing a hotspot or Internet connection for my netbook.
However, this app is not limited to posting to your website. You can moderate comments and edit previous posts to make quick updates/fixes.
Pictures can be added using your phones camera or from your saved pictures.
Update: Well when I selected the save button in the app I expected to have a local copy of the post saved to return to later and finish the post. However, what happened was it got uploaded and published.
So my first request for a feature addition is draft mode.
My other request for now is better media control so I do not just have to pick above or below for any graphics I add to the post.
Other than that I am very pleased to have this ability in my hands. I will continue to provide updates and feedback on this post as I explore it in depth.
Update 2: Well as I edit and publish updates to this post more things are presenting themselves as issues.
Media – Even though I selected a graphic for the post it did not appear. This may be related to the fact that I must use FTP credentials for uploading photos remotely. If that is the case then an error would be helpful as would the ability to add my FTP info to upload the graphics.
Post Categories – I selected four for this post only the default category for my site is being used on the live post.
My pleasure with this app is slowly dying because I have attempted to update this post 3 times and each time it has not uploaded the changes I have made.
In fact I reverted to using the web interface to get this info updated and online because my frustration level was climbing.
More to follow I am sure.
Update 3: This update comes to you from within the WordPress Edit Post page because the WordPress for Windows Phone 7 app is not at all consistent with its performance of doing basic tasks like editing, publishing, publishing media and publishing drafts.
The @WPWindowsPhone twitter account did answer an initial tweet I made about draft mode and told me I needed to make sure the Publish box was unchecked on the compose screen of the app. So I went to the app and saw where you can make the box around the word Publish turn on and off so I removed the box and posted a quick draft post test – which subsequently went live as soon as it hit the server!
I expressed my frustration via a tweet a little while ago and someone replied to remember that it is just an app and the devs will work on the issues since it was a 1.0 version of the app and likely to have some issues.
I agree – to an extent. The things I have discovered and posted about here are basic functionality for a WordPress based site. Drafts, post categories, media uploads, etc. These should work and work well out of the door even with a 1.0 version of an app – especially an app built and influenced by WordPress.
I can accept later tweaks such as improving the media placement abilities as you edit/create a post and FTP credentials for media upload but the basics should be solid at this point.
I do need to add that one thing that has worked very well so far this morning is the comment moderation ability of the app – no issues there.
Update 4: I just got a tweet back from @WPWindowsPhone and the Publish/Draft issue is now a known issue that is being tracked for a fix.
You can read the ticket here – https://windowsphone.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/18
Update 5: Dan from Automattic has just commented on this post and told me he added another tracker relating to the categories on uploaded posts not being saved using the app.
You can see the ticket here – http://windowsphone.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/19.
———-
This blog post was initially written with WordPress for Windows Phone.
