o say that the response from our initial WPtouch 1.0 release has been impressive would be a gross understatement. Prior to joining BraveNewCode, I released approximately eight open-source plugins to the WordPress community. In total, I imagine the downloads probably hit somewhere around 5,000 or so for all of them in a period of about two years.

Since releasing WPtouch 1.0 a few months ago, we have received countless emails, 358 368 comments or pingbacks, and over 14,000 downloads. Given the admiration for WordPress that everyone here at BraveNewCode shares, we’re extremely proud of the accomplishment, and thank everyone for their support.

WPtouch 1.0 represents hundreds of hours of work on a development side, with a large number of hours also spent testing on Matt’s site and on various other test configurations we have. With each release, we have meticulously tested each version against various releases of WordPress, and against several server configurations to ensure functionality for all of our users. For a small three person team, we’re very happy with the end result and the exposure WPtouch has brought to BraveNewCode and to WordPress on the iPhone. Leo Laporte recently gave WPtouch a favorable recommendation, as well as Tod Maffin from the CBC. We appreciate the exposure, and will reiterate how committed we are to ensuring that the WordPress iPhone experience is revolutionary.

This last weekend Dale and I put most of the finishing touches on WPtouch 2.0. While it’s similar in functionality to the 1.0 releases, we’ve incorporated a lot of big changes that many of our users have requested. To name a few:

• Additional configuration options in the administration panel
• Integration will several third party plugins
• Additional javascript optimizations for faster loading times
• Full internationalization (i.e. language) support
• Support for mobile m.domainname.com names
• Full theming support, so users can create their own themes, and download new themes from BraveNewCode
• Default inclusion of several extra themes for added user customization

In addition, once the 2.0 release is in the hands of our users, Dale and I have plans to do a full administration interface as well, allowing full functionality and administrative control from an iPhone.

We’re also extremely pleased to announce that WPtouch 2.0 will be offered in several premium varieties as well. For those of you who are using WPtouch 1.0 that are completely happy with the features, rest assured that we’ll continue with a free version as well. But for those of you who want to stay at the cutting edge with the iPhone, we’re going to offer premium versions for commercial and non-commercial usage. These versions will have enhanced features, will automatically allow you to receive unlimited lifetime updates, and give users access to priority product support.

While we’re still playing with the price-points, we believe that we will offer a $5 version for sites that are primarily non-commercial in nature, and a $20 version for sites that are commercial in nature. With regards to the commercial version, we will also be incorporating Google Adsense into WPtouch.

For those of you who think the iPhone and WPtouch are a fad, I would offer the following; In March of this year, Google released data regarding internet searches. The data was so controversial in fact, that Google asked its engineers to process the data again. In the end, Google showed that 50x as many web searches were made with the iPhone than all the other smart phones combined. As a grand total, that number represented approximately 0.5% of the entire internet search market (including PCs), which for a relatively new mobile device, is absolutely unprecedented.

Since that time, Apple has released the iPhone 3G and has gained increased market share. We fully expect that mobile searches and internet surfing are going to continue to explode. With that in mind, we feel that spending between $5 and $20 for an enhanced iPhone experience, complete with support, lifetime updates, and priority addition of new features, is well worth the expense. As we’ve shown with WPtouch 1.0, we’re absolutely committed to new features, a great iPhone experience, and maintaining our position on the cutting edge (as evidenced by the magnitude of releases we’ve done). We’re hoping every one of you will support our WPtouch 2.0 endeavors in the future, and we look forward to pushing WordPress to the extreme on the iPhone with each new release.

All the best,
BraveNewCode