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 Admin Panel Snap

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

2.2 Web-App Mode Notice Bubble

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.

2.2— optimized JavaScript

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

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.

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

WPtouch Pro 2.0.9

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

A Sneak Peek At The New Forums

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

Today we’re proud to announce the immediate availability of the major upgrade to WPtouch, WPtouch 2.0 Pro. WIth over 100 new features, a brand new admin panel and more themes available soon, WPtouch Pro is the best rich-mobile theme solution for WordPress websites.

Competitively priced at an incredible value, WPtouch Pro represents intense dedication over the past 3+ months between Duane Storey and Dale Mugford, co-founders of BraveNewCode.

60,000 lines of code with blood, sweat and love were poured into every aspect of the plugin, making it one of the most comprehensive, powerful, modular and easy-to-use WordPress plugins ever made.

Highlights

With more power and customization than ever before, WPtouch 2.0 Pro provides WordPress website owners a flexible mobile theming tool, while offering visitors a rich, fast and polished mobile web experience.

Web-App Mode

Offer your iPhone and iPod touch users a full-screen, AJAX-powered experience when they bookmark your site to their home screens. A first for WordPress mobile themes, WPtouch 2.0′s Web-App Mode automatically converts all local website links to load inside its fullscreen view, without any additional setup or configuration!

And just like native apps on iPhone and iPod touch, you can create and apply your own branded loading screen image that will display while your site fires up in Web-App Mode… sexy!

You can try out Web-App Mode right here on BraveNewCode.com.

Internationalized

WPtouch Pro comes ready with translations into Italian, German, French, Japanese and Spanish, and new languages like Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian and more will be added over upcoming release updates.

Discussion On The Go

In WPtouch 2.0, the full WordPress commenting system is supported. Paginated comments, inline replies and threading all work simply and beautifully. Your desktop theme comment settings are automatically transformed within WPtouch, with no extra setup required.

Coming soon: Intense Debate and Disqus commenting plugin systems will be supported, too, offering more native commenting WordPress power in a mobile experience than anywhere else.

Now Playing: Your Own Mobile Theme

WPtouch 2.0 offers some great theme experiences out-of-the-box, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Our Development Guru Duane Storey has painstakingly planned out a mobile theming framework underneath that provides flexible, time-saving power for theme creators looking to take WPtouch Pro to the next level.

Leverage the included Skeleton template to customize your theme, or of you’re a developer customer build one from scratch, harnessing the Developer Docs available to build your masterpiece.

All of BraveNewCode’s own WPtouch 2.0 themes are based on the very same Skeleton template included with every copy of WPtouch Pro.

Powerful Administration

The WPtouch Pro admin panel is as polished and pretty as the themes it drives. We’ve re-designed the plugin’s admin panel and packed a slew of new features into it.

From the drag and drop page/icon management to the easy to use theme browser/manager, to the new WPtouchboard overview, the WPtouch Pro admin panel might just be the best ever created for a WordPress plugin.

What You Get

For just $49 (CAD):

• A single-domain upgrade and support license for WPtouch Pro
• Re-download the plugin at any time by logging into bravenewcode.com/support
• As WPtouch Pro is GPL, you can modify, tweak or remix the code how you see fit
• Upgrades through all 2.x releases!
• Automatically receive any new free themes we add that ship with WPtouch 2.x
• Direct, professional support from the BNC team for the plugin (excludes custom theme support)
• Access to Knowledge Base articles, and User Docs
• One helluva cool plugin!

For just $99 (CAD):

• A 5-Pack of domain licenses for upgrades and support with WPtouch Pro
• Re-download the plugin at any time by logging into bravenewcode.com/support
• As WPtouch Pro is GPL, you can modify, tweak or remix the code how you see fit
• Upgrades through all 2.x releases!
• Automatically receive any new free themes we add that ship with WPtouch 2.x
• Direct, professional support from the BNC team for the plugin (excludes custom theme support)
• Access to Knowledge Base articles, and User Docs
• One helluva cool plugin!

For just $199 (CAD):

• Unlimited domain licenses for upgrades and support with WPtouch Pro
• Re-download the plugin at any time by logging into bravenewcode.com/support
• As WPtouch Pro is GPL, you can modify, tweak or remix the code how you see fit
• Upgrades through all 2.x releases!
• Automatically receive any new free themes we add that ship with WPtouch 2.x
• Direct, professional support from the BNC team for the plugin
• Access to Knowledge Base articles, and User Docs
• Access to Developer Docs, function reference, PSD templates, resources
• Custom theme support and guidance
• One helluva cool plugin!

To learn more about these packages or to pick up your own copy of WPtouch Pro, please visit the WPtouch Pro product page.

If you have any product questions, feel free to leave a comment here.
~The BraveNewCode Team

Known Deficiencies

These are things which we know either don’t work or haven’t been added yet:

• Disqus and Intense Debate issues (these plugins will be supported later)
• Current themes are feature/styling incomplete
• Page/Menu area in admin has some inconsistencies across different browsers

Focus Areas for Testing:

• Admin functionality, performance, usability
• Automatic upgrade process
• WordPress 3.0
• Web-app mode in Classic and Skeleton

Changelog:

• Fixed: Garbled tooltips on translated multibyte characters such as Kanji
• Fixed: Plugin information overlay would die on other plugins
• Fixed: Tooltips with double quotations in them
• Fixed: Warning for htmlspecialchars on PHP4
• Fixed: Incorrect icons on custom templates such as Archives and Links
• Changed: Settings architecture for admin
• Changed: Tooltips appearance in admin
• Changed: Style fixes for Skeleton
• Changed: Header menu, icon style changes for Skeleton for better cross-browser compat
• Changed: Some admin form buttons switched to divs for Ajax purposes
• Changed: Switch link appearance on desktop theme is now bigger, bolder
• Added: Full translations for Japanese, Spanish, French, and Italian. German translation is still partial
• Added: Ability to render a custom WPtouch setting
• Added: Ajax submit for admin panel
• Added: Web-app mode in Skeleton, Classic (including loading image)
• Added: Theme settings tab for web-app mode, status-bar color option
• Added: New functions for iPhone meta tags in theme header.php, now handled by a theme function
• Added: Custom “dark” class for the body for custom page templates
• Removed: Unused beta code, functions from core files

Coffee & Code

After several months, thousands of hours, hundreds of thousands of minutes, we’re close enough to WPtouch 2.0 Pro to announce pricing.

Premium Community

Truth be told it’s actually been difficult for us to make the decision to throw weight behind a premium version of WPtouch. We have always loved the spirit of the open-source community, and agree with the software freedoms associated with works attributed under a GPL license. And we’ve also been behind freely available plugins for our favourite publishing platform. Yet for those with successful and popular WordPress plugins, the support, update, maintenance and upkeep for such a plugin become hefty. Without financial support, they are impossible to sustain effectively, and enjoyably.

There’s a growing community of premium solutions available for platforms like WordPress, and with WPtouch Pro we’re throwing our hat into the ring.

Unlike many other paid plugins, WPtouch Pro is neither small or limited in its functionality, nor is it a premium plugin that’s come out of nowhere— people who purchase WPtouch 2.0 Pro know the quality, time, dedication and style of the work we do, based on the freely available WPtouch 1.x that’s been out for almost 3 years, and our other popular WordPress plugin, WordTwit.

Without Further Ado: Pricing

All figures in Canadian dollars (CAD).

• The price for a single license of WPtouch 2.0 Pro is only $49
• The price for a 5-pack of licenses is only $99
• The price for an unlimited, developer license is only $199

Licenses, among other things offer:
- Free automatic upgrades through a major version (all 2.x releases)
- Pro Support on bravenewcode.com/support
- Access to Docs, Knowledge Base articles
- Receive the new themes that ship with 2.x as a part of automatic updates

Note: Free direct support for WPtouch 1.9 is being discontinued. Free support will end 30 days after the release of 2.0. The Support forums will still include the community forums for 1.9 so users can share tips, and find existing answers to commonly asked questions.

Compare

Compare WPtouch Pro pricing with most other premium plugins and we think you’ll find it quite reasonable (it’s probably one of the cheapest premium plugins, really).

And for all of what WPtouch 2.0 Pro brings to the table we think it’s an incredible offer as far as premium plugins go.

Beta 2

We’ve been making good progress with beta 1 of WPtouch Pro, and plan on pushing out beta 2 early next week, likely Monday. For those in the beta program, expect a 1.4 update tomorrow which should shore up the existing issues in beta 1, and we’ll be working aggressively over the weekend to add a few more things for beta 2.

Beta 2 is an important milestone because it will mark the finished Skeleton template, complete with web-app mode, enabling those of you most interested in custom theming to get to work with what will essentially be the shipping version of the Skeleton.

More Info

You can get more information on WPtouch Pro, what’s included, feature set overviews and sign-up to be notified when its available by visiting bravenewcode.com/wptouch-pro.

After months of hard work WPtouch 2.0 Pro is ready for some beta testing love. We’re looking for a small group of dedicated testers to help make it as solid, safe and snappy as possible. If you’re interested in joining the beta program please read below on what we’re looking for before deciding to dive in.

General Information About The Beta Program

The WPtouch 2.0 Pro beta program is for the paid version of WPtouch. Beta testers participating in the program will receive a copy of the WPtouch 2.0 beta, and gain access to a private beta forum on our Support Forums to log issues and discuss the release.

Once installed, new versions of the beta will be released through the admin panel in WordPress. When the official 2.0 release is available, testers can upgrade to it through the admin from the beta as well.

Beta testers should be aware that WPtouch 2.0 Beta 1 is incomplete. We will issue updates to the beta over the coming weeks to improve stability and complete features, and we’ll ask for new rounds of review with a list of changes for testing.

As with any beta release, we expect to see bugs and issues which (though unlikely) may affect the stability of your WordPress environment. It is not recommended to join the beta program unless you are comfortable with beta releases and feel capable of restoring software and databases associated with your WordPress setup. That said, we don’t anticipate any serious issues or concerns with the betas.

Areas Of Focus

We ask that if you are interested in a beta of WPtouch Pro that you fall into at least 1 of 3 categories:

1. You’re interested because of the many new features, and want to try and help improve the new theme(s) it offers
2. You’re interested in designing/developing a custom theme with the new Skeleton
3. You’re damn good at finding bugs and testing software, and think you can help us with your awesome bug squishing abilities

Requirements

To join the WPtouch 2.0 Pro beta program, we require the following:

1. You have or create a BNCID* (to assign the license and forum access)
2. You have a WordPress.org self-hosted website running WordPress 2.9.x
3. The necessary admin credentials to upload and activate plugins on your WordPress installation
4. That’s it!

*You can register for a BNCID by clicking the ‘Register’ link in the header of this website.

For beta 1 we will only be testing on 2.9.x. WPtouch 2.0 Pro will support WordPress 2.8, 2.9, and 3.0 officially, but our focus for beta 1 is on current versions of WordPress.

The purpose of the beta program is to harden and shore-up any issues related to the working functionality of the software, so we’d kindly ask that you do not publish reviews of the WPtouch 2.0 betas as product reviews at this time.

We’d also ask that you resign yourself to being a top-secret spy and not spreading information and details about the plugin before we do, if at all possible. We’re not crazy like Apple but do appreciate solidarity!

Enough Already! Gimme A Copy!

Hold your horses! First thing’s first: there are a limited number of spaces in the beta program.

We’ll contact those who want to join on a first-come, first-serve basis. We’ll send out a welcome mail and fill you in on the details if you’re in the group. If not, don’t worry: WPtouch 2.0 Pro will be released in June, and that’s not far off!

Register for the WPtouch 2.0 Beta

Updated: The beta registration is now closed.

WPtouch is now at 1.9.9.7, with the last few updates aimed at shoring up outstanding bugs and issues. The latest updates have fixed admin problems to do with the RSS feed area, fixing CSS styling for GigPress support, and adding a new option to choose your bookmark icon to be flat instead of having the ‘Glossy Effect’ automatically applied to it.

Also previously we addressed some icon upload issues and removed older, orphaned code.

This update is recommended for all users.

Years ago I had a chat with Matt Mullenweg down at WordCamp San Francisco where he hinted that they might activate WPtouch on WordPress.com. It looks like that day is finally here— WPtouch is now available for users of WordPress.com.

I have to say, it’s pretty cool to finally see it up for everyone to use. According to that post, over 60 million page views a month are made from mobile devices, many of which will now see their own blog through the eyes of WPtouch. Dale and I have a bunch of great ideas for WPtouch, so hopefully some of the changes we have in store will also end up on WordPress.com in the near future.

Duane talked shop at WordCamp Portland about opportunities for WordPress and mobile devices, including the history of the mobile internet, the opportunities presented by mobile web users, plugins and themes available to facilitate mobile use of WordPress, how to test your site for mobile use, and more.

Video production by Joe Christensen of Blaze Streaming Media.

WPtouch 1.9.3 was also released, and brings with it a new feature and several bug fixes as well.

In 1.9.3 you can now choose to disable Ajax comments as the default method for commenting. We think Ajax comments are great (especially on a mobile device), but they bring with them some issues, and don’t always work right on every install or with every other plugin, so we’ve added this feature as a failsafe for those who’ve been reporting issues.

Other bugs were fixed pertaining to stability and javascript, the admin, and more.

We wanted to get some of the lingering issues resolved before completing and releasing the Skins features, as well as languages support, both of which we feel we’re in the clear to add so look for those to come over the next little while.

As always you can leave feedback about any of our free, open-source WordPress plugins in our Support Forums.

Below is a list of issued resolved in the last few updates, so if you’ve been having any of the below issues please upgrade and test again, then report lingering issues or new concerns in our Support Forums.

• Fixed issue where mobile switch to regular theme was always zoomed in and required refresh
• Fixed issue where pages changed from published to unpublished still showed in the WPtouch menu
• Fixed issue where ‘Load More Entries’ caused blank page or other issues. WPtouch now detect possible issues and defaults to pagination
• WPtouch now loads minified versions of its CSS and JS for the theme, speeding up load times
• Added check for wp-load.php before attempting ajax comments. Should fix WP comment posting issues. Working on better Disqus and Intense Debate support as well
• Removed ‘Find in this page’ button, until bugs are resolved
• Now WPtouch will not hide mobileSafari addressbar on single post pages, for readers on slower connections (page won’t awkwardly bump them to the top when reading an article)
• Fixed bug where WPtouch admin would report that CURL wasn’t installed even if it was
• Fixed bug for admin panel Ajax not working in some situations
• Adsense re-enabled
• Fixed bug where SPAM comments were pushed via Prowl
• Push Notification options now announces if Curl is not available, instead of not appearing at all
• Removed text-size adjust option, now replaced with user-adjustable font size on post page
• Minor code corrections

RC2 Includes:

If you’re a beta tester, please provide some feedback. No new features will be added for the 1.9 release (besides Skins being turned on), so keep the feedback to bug reports only if your could.

You can follow the latest discussion in our forums, here.

Please test the newest features (listed below), and provide some feedback in the Support Forums. No more features will be added for the 1.9 release (besides Skins being turned on).

Here’s the short list of notable changes for Beta 9:

Theme:

• Style declaration for closed comments added
• Filter for trackbacks and pingbacks from display in comment counts
• Custom post page nav links now check if next/prev post exists before showing arrow
• Added friendly ‘noscript’ display bezel for users with javascript Turned off
• Fixed an issue where WP Spam Free users may have had new comments blocked
• Added Prowl Push notifications direct messages submenu item (if enabled)

Admin:

• Fully compatible with WordPress 2.8.2
• Added ability to exclude categories
• Added Prowl Push notifications for comments, user registrations, and direct messages
• Turned on skin selection support, still no skins enabled yet
• Plugin compatibility listing now loads from bravenewcode.com for an always
  up-to-date listing of plugin compatibility and conflicts

*NOTE
The beta requires WordPress 2.6 or newer.
We are ending support for older, insecure versions of WordPress. Please do not attempt to install or use this beta if you’re not 100% kosher with that : )

**DOWNLOAD:
As with all beta releases for WPtouch, you can download WPtouch beta 9 from the WPtouch admin, and are required to install it via FTP only.

If you’re not currently using any of the betas, you can download it form the link below:

DOWNLOAD WPtouch 1.9 Beta 9 (Latest)

This update (and all others in the betas) is smaller than the final release will be. I’ve temporarily removed non-plugin files (like all the screenshots) which the WordPress repository needs but are not needed to run the plugin. This should help with people upgrading throughout the beta series.

Cheers everyone, and thanks for being patient with us, and helping us improve on WPtouch!

Recently the Prowl application for iPhone was released, and with it came the possibility of bringing Growl notifications to WPtouch.

While certainly not complete and by no means tested thoroughly, in alpha testing is a new feature for WPtouch that enables website admins to have their WordPress website push Prowl notifications. In combination with Prowl, we’re testing the ability to have direct messages, new comments, new user registrations and posts by other users— all pushed as Prowl notifications on your Mac & iPhone.

There’s already a plugin called Prowl Me which allows users to send a direct message from your WordPress website to your iPhone, and we’ll build upon that allowing more happenings on your website to be sent to you, too.

So look for push notifications to be added to a WPtouch beta at some point over the coming weeks, and give it a try yourself!

Beta Busting

To say that things have changed from Beta 1 through 7 would be an understatement! Thanks to great help in the support forums from those of you who’ve been actively testing the betas we’re approaching Beta 8, a release that will see the addition of skins, a series of mods to the default appearance of WPtouch (the above image shows ‘Lavender’ and ‘Frog’). Skins can be easily selected in the admin, and will add more colorful branding to WPtouch. Skins will be great for those that like the default theme’s layout but are looking for a stronger color branding that resembles their site’s theme. We’ll add other skins too.

Bug Squish

We’ve killed several bugs over the beta releases, and added a slew of features both visible and under the hood. We hope that with each successive release there are fewer issues as a whole, and the beta program will help immensely with that.

WordPress Version Support

Due to father time, we’ll be dropping support for WordPress 2.3, 2.5 and 2.6.1 – 2.6.4. We’d prefer to stick with support for secure versions of WordPress, and given that as of WordPress 2.7 you can stay up to date with the latest WordPress version simply by clicking a button- there’s no excuse not to stay current. We’ll be incorporating all the latest and greatest features, and won’t be held back from including things like nested & paginated comments, features which are harder to implement when you’re supporting versions of WordPress over 18 months old.

What’s Been Done

Here’s a rough list of what’s been accomplished so far:

• Changed default theme styles for images (now load as background images)
• Made sprites for small theme images to load quicker
• Added all-new variations on the default theme as style selections (Frog, Sea, Lavender, Sunkissed)
• Added jQuery color picker in the admin hex areas for easier style selections
• Fix for Categories, Tags & Login links not working in some mobile browsers (Android, etc)
• Combined CSS files and minified javascript files
• Updated Ajax Upload script to 3.2
• Moved adsense.php to include folder
• Updated screenshots for new designs
• Fixed an issue where excerpts could contain too much spacing
• New admin styling, plugin support for WordPress 2.6.5 sites
• Revised header area styling
• Search now floats overtop the headerbar
• Refined drop down button
• Footer switch link now a part of Core
• No longer using the_content_rss() for excerpts, created a custom function which handles it nicely
• Home link in menu drop down now respects the logo/bookmark icon choice
• Fixed the way javascript is called for a elements, should work better in other mobile browsers
• Moved several images into the core images folder, building more dependency on CoreTheme
• Fix for custom page icons not showing up on pages
• Added link to online icon generator in admin
• Fixed device-width mobileSafari bug
• Added style declaration for images in comments
• More theme changes/enhancements, particularly in the header, footer
• Added ‘My Account’ button in the sub-header for logged in users replacing ‘Logout’
• Fixed issue where chosen pages and icons did not appear in the drop down
• Removed 404 image with English text in it, replaced it with localized 404 text
• Updated fancybox to compressed v1.2.1
• Fixed a few areas that had text not yet localized, improperly coded
• Removed depreciated or unused functions from previous releases
• Removed ability to disable jQuery; WPtouch Exclusive mode should fix JS issues
• Added native select for Tags
• Updated compatibility code (Various WordPress install scenarios) ~ thanks to Will Norris for the suggestions
• Modified AJAX calls
• Made it so administration CSS/JS only loads on WPtouch page
• Fixed a variety of scenarios where paths to files and images were broken
• Updated social bookmarking icons
• More preparation for WPtouch 1.9 and 5 languages
• Preparation for WPtouch 2.0 and themes support (based on CoreTheme)
• Fixed switch link issue where regular theme switch link was broken
• Major re-writes of theme files, css for simplicity, CoreTheme
• Updates to default theme style

What’s To Come

We’ve still got a couple more skins to do, and then the plugin will be shipped off for localization. We’re looking into a couple methods for easy localization, so stay tuned if you offered to help and we’ll soon deliver to you the information on how to get started- we want to make sure the English text is settled so that it doesn’t have to be changed often and require revision from translators.

Beta 8 should be available this week, and will include the new skins for testing.

Check it out!

(Blip.tv embed, click the image to open and view)

What We Need

We’re looking to have a small group of dedicated testers provide feedback and use case issues over the course of successive beta releases.

All new beta releases will be automatically shown in the new WPtouch admin panel as they become available, and are required to be installed via FTP only. So if you don’t have access to your WordPress install using FTP, please don’t attempt to download and use the beta, or participate in this program.

WPtouch 1.9 Beta Availability

If you’re interested in joining, read up on the program thread in the forums.

Please read the following on using WPtouch betas:

Important!

- A beta is a beta: by their very nature these releases are less stable than our traditional updates.

- Please check the Support Forum section for these releases for the known issues BEFORE upgrading or attempting to use them. They’ll outline things we know aren’t working properly or are unknown.

- Please don’t post feature requests in the Support threads for the betas- we’re focusing on making these releases stable and reliable under a variety of WordPress install scenarios, and if we add features in successive releases they were already planned- so you might get what want anyways : )

- As well, don’t e-mail us about issues with the betas; always post to the appropriate thread in the Support forums (i.e. WPtouch 1.9 beta 1, WPtouch 1.9 beta 2, etc.)

Since 1.8.9.1 There’s been over 200 commits to the repository, and almost every file has been modified and given a little love.

You can find out more on the changes in each beta by visiting the Forums.