Soon we’ll pass 3 million downloads of WPtouch, the most popular and easy-to-use mobile plugin for WordPress. We expect to cross the mark sometime in the next few weeks!

To celebrate we’re giving away a 32GB iPhone 4S in your choice of white or black!

We’ll draw a winner and make an announcement on Twitter and our blog. If you’re the selected winner, we’ll contact you on Twitter.

Good luck to all entrants!

The contest is now closed. We’ll draw the winner soon.

*Prize is available to North American and EU residents only.

2 Million Served

Wow! Today we’re excited to report that we’ve crossed the 2,000,000 downloads mark on the counter present on the official wordpress.org WPtouch plugin page.

It Started in 2008

Most people might not know this, but WPtouch 1.0 was officially released over 3 years ago in April of 2008. Since that time it’s seen massive success— some of it beyond its 2 million downloads via wordpress.org. WPtouch is also used on WordPress.com, powering millions and millions of WordPress websites everywhere.

Becoming The Standard

With it’s pairing of ease of use and great features, WPtouch has become the standard mobile plugin for WordPress websites. Users the world over enjoy it’s uncompromising support for standard WordPress features while providing fast, efficient mobile presentation of content.

Going Pro

In the summer of last year we released the premium successor to WPtouch, WPtouch Pro. With the Pro version we added over 200 new features and capabilities, and improved every aspect of the product delivering an extremely high-quality plugin that offers incredible value— something competing products have yet to beat.

In January of this year we shipped a major update to WPtouch Pro, 2.1. In that update we delivered amazing iPad support, integrated in an easy to use way that shared many common settings with the mobile theme. Other products simply can’t offer the depth of features, capability, quality and ease of use that WPtouch Pro customers enjoy.

The Future

Going forward, we hope to hand-down some the advancements made in WPtouch Pro to our freely available version. And more updates and new features, themes and more are planned for WPtouch Pro releases throughout the next 15 months.

Thanks To You

All of the attention, success and love for WPtouch and BraveNewCode as a company is thanks solely to our users and customers.

We’re a small company, and our business is built on great user experiences and word-of-mouth reviews and recommendations— so thank you to everyone who’s been behind us and our work.

See you at 3,000,000!

WPtouch Pro 2.2 Now Available

We’re always looking at ways we can improve, optimize and streamline our work, especially for our mobile plugins WPtouch, WPtouch Pro and Piggy. On mobile, every split second counts, and we work hard to improve the speed of our products while maintaining ease of use and clean under-the-hood code.

In the WPtouch Pro 2.2 update (now available) we’ve packed more improvements, fixes, tweaks & refinements than ever before in anything we’ve done. After a solid four weeks of work, every corner of our premium mobile plugin offering was given a good wash and made even better for our customers.

WPtouch Pro 2.2 is a free update for all existing customers.

Highlights

With WPtouch Pro we revolutionized mobile WordPress plugins bringing our one-of-a-kind Web-App Mode feature to WordPress self-hosted sites everywhere.

With Web-App Mode you can effortlessly offer a fullscreen web application version of you website for visitors on iOS devices, out-of-the-box.

In WPtouch Pro 2.2, the technology unpinning Web-App Mode has been re-written for even better performance and reliability, on both mobile and iPad.

We’ve also improved compatibility with other WordPress plugins that require AJAX like Google Translate. For these plugins, a single click disables WPtouch Pro’s AJAX in web-app mode to ensure compatibility. WPtouch Pro then intelligently uses a new method for loading your site pages without AJAX, all while maintaining a smooth, fast mobile web application experience.

Squish!

We also took the time needed to eliminate a variety of smaller issues that crept up after the 2.1 release. In total, we’ve fixed dozens of issues found by team staff and customers, totalling 300 new code changes.

Swoosh!

Despite WPtouch Pro being a much larger plugin than its free companion, it still loads faster on mobile devices than WPtouch 1.9.x. That said, there’s lot of new features, settings and options, so when loading the WPtouch Pro admin on some servers it resulted in less optimal performance.

So we wanted to do better. We’ve re-factored code and reduced memory usage. We also made a variety of changes to many smaller aspects of the way our revolutionary admin panel works to slim and shave load times and improve usability.

Our admin panel is truly awesome, offering all settings for WPtouch Pro in one place— all in a clean, easy to use layout.

On the theme side WPtouch on mobile and iPad runs smoother than ever, up to 1.5x times faster* with its re-factored code. For example the 2.1.5 theme.js file for mobile was over 900 lines. In 2.2, it’s 453, and does even more!

What’s Next

With these major improvements completed, the focus for WPtouch Pro turns back to themes, so look for new theme additions in the coming releases ahead.

*Based on tests conducted on BraveNewCode.com running WPtouch Pro 2.2

The Beginning

When we first wrote the code and designed what would become WPtouch we did so with one clear thing in mind— we were creating something for where the mobile web was going, not where it was or where it had been.

On Every Website

We imagined that nearly every website would eventually offer mobile versions, and that those who didn’t would be the exception.

At first, tools like WPtouch would be useful to bridge the gap between desktop and mobile presentation. As anyone who’s built a website knows, development and design aren’t all that cheap, and if you’re adding a mobile version to it just adds more time, money, and effort to the process. What’s more, there just weren’t any good tools available previously to help do so. Many site owners previously didn’t consider shipping a mobile version for these reasons.

Being able to install and configure a mobile version with little to know development time or cost is a great stop-gap solution for many, and perfectly suitable as a permanent solution for others. WPtouch accomplishes this gracefully.

The Wave

These people venturing into the mobile arena with regular websites are intrepid explorers; the first wave of small and medium-sized website owners adapting to a space that previously could only be occupied by large companies, or those with the cash/business need to deliver mobile web experiences. Now, there are different tools to harness web traffic viewership that make it easier and more affordable to offer “tailored for the mobile web” solutions.

The Wave Redux

At present, a growing number of those explorers in the mobile web publishing world are growing more savvy, and want more custom mobile solutions that better reflect the style and brand that their desktop sites/services offer.

As more and more people join the mobile revolution, postered by similar solutions to mobile web presentation of content like WPtouch, this wave of mobile exploration will grow strong, yet not everyone will follow.

This marks the point of divergence.

Two Schools

With the rise of social networking services which collect information and serve vast amounts of people, together with the “app-ification” of the web ( the tendency for ubiquitous interface styles to serve content), users are increasingly demanding this ubiquity- simple solutions like WPtouch Pro which offer a compromise between customization and ease of use.

The divergence is created not by the explorers, but rather by their users— much of the feedback we see and hear is often from those who are asking website owners to install WPtouch for them to use to access content. The growing want for a familiar, easy interface is a by-product of the increasing complexity experienced by web users on all web and technology fronts.

The High Horsers

Conversely, those that advocate and prefer completely custom mobile solutions are either a) in the web industry and are savvy, preferring to distinguish themselves from others and have the skill to do so, or b) have the resources to afford the cost of such development.

It’s been our experience that the majority of mobile web users prefer something like WPtouch. That may not be true of website owners, but the demand for WPtouch by visitors says something powerful that you just don’t see on the desktop.

Idealism vs. Reality

As a content publisher, it’s ideal to deliver completely custom mobile solutions- similar design experiences on the desktop + mobile web is really (what seems at first pass) the most natural. But the differences between them are vast, like those between the workings of quantum and relative mechanics; with time and examination it becomes clear that completely custom mobile experiences might not be the best solution for a great many sites.

The medium of the internet is heavily influenced by the ways it can be presented. As desktop displays got larger and the tools for web development smarter, the web grew in a way that was directly opposed to the restrictive nature of small mobile devices and the “information without decoration” needs of mobile web users (oh, the dreaded WAP).

Then came the iPhone, and with it an explosion of touch-based smartphones that aimed to put the real web in your pocket.

But the real web in your pocket just didn’t feel right. Native apps showed that web content presented and tailored for the device and touch interface proved far more popular than the websites they were culled from.

That App-Like Experience

That’s why we chose to go the route of separating the presentation of mobile web content in a user interface from its website’s presentation, and instead tailor it to the devices it would be viewed on— at current the iOS and Android devices that make up the bulk of the mobile web traffic today.

These touch devices have interface requirements and interactive interactive prepositions which either do not exist on the desktop or have no corollary. We thought it was more natural that a mobile user, becoming accustomed to the way their mobile device worked and behaved, be presented with a similar interface that they would instantly recognize and understand.

We worked to match expectations for the behavior of how content + navigation were seen & interacted with. The goal for a user being (when presented with a similar layout on another website) that they would focus less on the layout itself but more on its content.

Bold-ly Forward

Some people think WPtouch should also have backwards, non-touch compatibility on devices like the BlackBerry Bold, Curve, etc. While these devices are still popular in many business environments, they don’t represent much of the mobile web traffic today, and the direction these browsing statistics are going. What’s more, the browsers on older, non-touch mobile devices make it quite difficult to offer rich, engaging experiences, dampening the cause to create them.

That’s an important distinction: The popularity of mobile devices themeselves in the wild doesn’t necessarily mean you should invest in web solutions for them; rather, popular mobile devices which account for the bulk of mobile traffic should be your concern.

And in that regard, WPtouch and WPtouch Pro cover well over 90% of that traffic.

Philosophy

So we look forward to what’s next, and instead of working with the mobile web today exclusively, we see the future of the mobile web when we consider what we do with the WPtouch/WPtouch Pro plugins. We’re not prophets and have no crystal ball when it comes to where the mobile revolution might take us all, but we are tuned to the needs of users and content creators, and hope to remain a leader in providing tools for accessing WordPress on the go.

Its been a busy summer for BraveNewCode! Launching WPtouch Pro was an intense project, and we’ve been proud of the response so far. We keep improving WPtouch Pro, too, and have lots of great features, new themes and some surprises planned going forward.

Every once in awhile we like to share an overview of what’s been happening and what we’re up to— affectionately, our “state of the code” address of sorts.

WPtouch 1.9.19

While WPtouch Pro is our main focus, we still give love and attention to WPtouch 1.9, servicing it for bug fixes and feature additions to make it even better.

We just released version 1.9.19, and with it we’ve finally delivered true localization. We’ve included the .pot file in the new /lang folder, which can be used to create language .mo files to translate both the theme and the admin panel.

Submit your translation today to translation@wptouch.com, and we’ll review it for inclusion in a future release.

WPtouch Pro v2.0.9

We’ve been chipping away at point releases for WPtouch Pro, now reaching 2.0.9 and delivering with it fixes, enhancements, compatibility and stability improvements.

Notable new additions include better custom language translation handling, improvements in WordPress Multisite compatibility, and a new feature allowing WPtouch Pro to be disabled for selected URLs and pages.

We strongly recommend upgrading if you’re running any previous version of WPtouch Pro.
WPtouch Pro 2.0.9 will be available later today.

Upcoming: WPtouch Pro v2.1

We’ve begun work on the next major version of WPtouch Pro, which will deliver iPad support, child themes, and support for WordPress 3.0′s custom menus.

Many people have inquired as to what iPad support will be in 2.1, and we’d like to share a couple of thoughts about it.

First of all, iPad support will be opt-in. When you update to 2.1 you’ll be able to decide whether you want to enable iPad support or not. Some are happy with the way their sites look and work on iPad already, and for those people they won’t have to do anything.

For those who do want iPad support, they have a number of options related to what happens with iPad support, and we’ll undoubtedly add to those options over time.

There are already some solutions available for iPad theme stuff with WordPress. We could have shipped “support” for iPad very early on, by simply enabling the user agent and letting WPtouch be WPtouch on iPad. We didn’t for several reasons, but the most important is that we don’t think WPtouch as a theme concept is appropriate on a device like iPad.

Small, hand-held mobile devices are very different from tablet devices such as the iPad. And the iPad user interface, (while borrowing from the iPhone) has some dramatic differences, most notably the way in which vertical and horizontal views are handled in most apps.

So we’re hoping our solutions feel as natural, intuitive and enjoyable for users as possible. And because we don’t have to make the same kinds of compromises as we do with WPtouch (for device compatibility), we can do a few things that should enhance the web experience of a site using WPtouch Pro on iPad.

WPtouch Pro Affiliate Program

We recently launched a new Affiliate Program for customers of WPtouch Pro. Earn 20% on purchases of WPtouch Pro made through text or image advertisements on your website. Find out more ->

WordTwit

We’ve received lots of feedback over the past few months on our WordPress Twitter plugin, WordTwit. Ideas on how to make it better, and what people would like to see added to it have trickled in on our Forums, over Twitter, and here on the blog.

Though we haven’t said much publicly, we’ve been listening to everyone and have been working on adding several enhancements and new features to bring WordTwit up to version 3.0 with some powerful new additions. Stay tuned on the progress towards its 3.0 release, we’ll have new details available soon.

Site Revamp

We’re also chipping away at an overhaul of the entire BNC site, including the forums. We’re re-designing and tweaking the whole experience, focusing on account access and easier support assistance for our customers.

We hope everyone will enjoy the new site when we unveil the new digs. We’ll post some screenshots for feedback a little further down the road.

Thanks

We want to say thanks to all our WPtouch Pro customers, our users, friends, family and followers. It’s your support and interest in what we’re doing that keeps us motivated to do more.

Best,
The BraveNewCode Team