We’ve just released WPtouch 1.6, a long overdue upgrade on our most popular plugin. We need to detail some changes, as those of you who’ve been loyal users need to be in the know to make the most of the new features and changes.

1. Blank Page Issue Solved, New Re-Direction Option

One of the continued issues faced by some users had to do with seeing a blank page when the homepage was loaded on an iPhone/iPod touch. The issue had to do with a few different causes, one of which is a ‘too many re-directs’ error, and the other a problem with the way that WPtouch looks for your posts page choice in the WordPress -> Reading settings.

We’ve added a new feature to take care of this, and it works by reading your settings for homepage/postspage in the WordPress admin, and respecting those choices. If you choose to override them and choose instead to have another page (or your blog page) as the homepage shown with WPtouch, you can do so by selecting the page you’d like as your WPtouch homepage in the WPtouch admin panel.

2. WPtouch Admin

We’ve added more customized support for the WP 2.7 admin panel appearance, while also updating the pre-2.7 admin appearance as well.

3. Captions, Galleries & Images

We’ve resolved a bug where captions underneath photos/gallery items in a post would run beyond the edge of the screen, and not be wrapped. We’ve also added better styling & support for captions on images and gallery items. Lastly, images & galleries in posts automatically resize according to the orientation of the iPhone/iPod touch, making them fill the width of the post area. We think this is an awesome addition!

4. Inject Mint / Google Analytics & More JS Code In WPtouch

Though not an oft requested feature, we’ve added support for manually adding your Mint, Google Analytics, or other custom javascript code into WPtouch, without having to edit the php files yourself, and ensuring your additions survive future upgrades.

6. Errors & Bug Fixes

We continue to harden WPtouch, removing pesky, sometimes very unique bugs as they’re discovered. Notably in this release we’ve fixed an outstanding Call to a member function get() on a non-object error.

7. Header Login

Another frequent request we receive come from those of you who require login from your users to access premium content/comment on your site’s entries. So, we’ve added the ability to turn on login from the sub-header in WPtouch. Once turned on a new ‘login’ link with an image is placed beside the ‘search’ and ‘menu’ buttons, and it opens a drop-down when activated which allows for an automated login which will login a user and automatically re-direct them back to the page they logged in from without having to be taken to the WordPress admin, or having to see the default WordPress login/register page. We’ll add WPtouch-styled registration in an upcoming update.

8. Header Categories

Also requested often was the ability to have Categories in the drop-down menu. We’ve taken it one step further and added it as an option to enable/disable from the WPtouch admin. When enabled, it’ll show a new ‘Categories’ header item which when clicked will drop down a list of your categories shown in alphabetical order.

Holy Jumpin! There’s more?

There’s even more to this release believe it or not! Here’s the full run down:

• Auto-resizing images in posts on orientation change!
• Auto-resizing Flickr images
• Auto-resizing WP image galleries
• Better support for captions on images, gallery items
• Added the ability to enable a quick login button w/ drop-down in the WPtouch header
• Added the ability to enable categories as a drop-down item in the WPtouch header
• Added the ability to disable WPtouch automatic homepage redirection (resolves white page issue)
• Added the ability to manually select a re-direct landing page
• Refinements in WPtouch admin
• Enhanced support for WordPress 2.7 + admin
• Re-designed post comment bubble icon
• Input box to inject custom code (Google Analytics, MINT, etc) into WPtouch
• Basic support for Incognito & WebMate browsers
• General code cleanups & optimizations
• General style cleanups and enhancements

Feel free to head on over to the WPtouch page to download the new version, or use the auto-update mechanism in your WordPress admin to install it. As always, we love to hear feedback from our users, and will continue to add new features and functionality going forward.

What’s Next?

So, what’s next for WPtouch? We’ve got a number of features planned, some of which include localization (for international users), adsense support, WordTwit & Twitter integration, support for excluding categories and much more.