Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin – version 2.0 released
Posted by Rich Gubby on December 29, 2009 at 8:21 amFiled under: Mobile Web Development, Wordpress Mobile
Two weeks ago Automattic released a new version of WordPress (2.9). As it’s Christmas, we thought we’d enter into the spirit of things and release an updated version of the Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin for WordPress as a present.
We’ve listened to all of your feedback, ideas and suggestions – and as we’ve now got a fancy issue tracking system, we’ve been able to prioritise all of them and create a development roadmap. However, saying that, it became pretty obvious what the focus of this release was going to be – mobile themes.
Mobile themes
We’d had reports of users not being able to style up their site to make it look snazzy, so rather than leave you with boring themes that won’t inspire anyone, we’ve created some mobile themes for you. What this means is that to make your mobile blog look cool, all you have to do is choose from one of our new themes in a drop down – how easy is that! Our team of graphic designers have had their crayons out and have hopefully created a theme that you’d like to implement on your blog. Our favourite at the moment is the “Wooden” theme, but there should be something to suit you – check out the screenshots below to see what they all look like.
Wooden
Sky
Coal and Fire
Obsidian
Brushed Metal
Scrap Book
Plugin Compatibility
Another area we’ve had plenty of requests to look at was with compatibility with other WordPress plugins.
Whilst looking at how to create a solution for the PowerPress podcast plugin, I stumbled across a function that turned any shortcode functionality into actual markup, and seeing as the Wapple Architect mobile plugin already turned HTML markup into WAPL, it meant that any plugin using shortcodes is instantly mobilized! Some very popular plugins that have had millions of downloads can now be used on your mobile site – Contact Form 7 is just one example but there are hundreds, if not thousands of other ones that will now work on your mobile phone.
A full list of everything we’ve included in version 2.0 is below – keep reading for the full story.
Major Improvements
- Added pre-designed themes
- Added compatibility for any other plugin that uses shortcodes
- Added full WPMU compatibility – prior to this release, all CSS and images were stored in one location so I’ve now moved this location if you’re using WordPress MU so that multiple blogs will work.
Minor Improvments
- Added switch layout option – if you prefer your site to be displayed with DIVs instead of tables, use this option.
- Added more classes for styling – more customization options for styling
- Compatible with WordPress 2.9
Although this plugin addresses the big issue of mobile themes and we have a feature list as long as your arm, we’re always on the lookout for new ideas and suggestions so please keep them coming!
Finally – have you tried out any of our mobile themes yet? And if so, which one is your favourite? Please let us know!
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December 30th, 2009 at 11:20 am
well i am happy with wapple i am not good at coding though but i have made some successful wapsites which are really cool people love them thanks
January 30th, 2010 at 8:59 pm
Hey, Rich. Good to see you’re still chipping away at this plugin. It’s been a lifesaver! However, the 3.0 update has handicapped our mobile site. Only one post shows up per page, and it doesn’t have a thumbnail (all this despite having 5 posts as the setting for the home page and the option to show the first image as a thumbnail). Any thoughts? Let me know if you need more info…
J
January 30th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
PS. Much of the CSS is also gone, and it’s showing a strange link that is related to a draft I just created, but not the actual link to that draft (which isn’t published, in any event). Strange things are afoot!
January 30th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
Hi Jed – taking a look now – something strange is going on with the wordpress repository – it’s failing on certain files and i’m not certain whether the 3.0 update all went through ok.
Checking now – might have to release a new version with the same code just to make sure it’s all ok.
January 31st, 2010 at 11:56 am
just checked out a few things on your site and noticed that you’d got some “display:none” styling on a few elements in your custom stylesheet.
If you remove those, your posts come back!
hope this helps!
June 26th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Can anyone simply show us how to make our pages appear just as mobilized on our blog as they do on WordPress.com?
It seems either we know everything there is to know about mobile sites or nothing at all.