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!

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

We’re happy to announce Jessica Beck as the winner of our 32GB iPod touch and WPtouch Pro 5-Pack contest!

If you’re the winner we’ll contact you via e-mail or through Twitter. Once we get your address info we’ll mail out the iPod touch today, and setup your WPtouch Pro 5-Pack license.

Here’s Jessica with her iPod touch!

How We Chose The Winner

We counted up and numbered all the comments on this post and the re-tweets on Twitter for the contest and entered them into this random number picker to get our winner.

Thanks to everyone who entered the contest, especially those who shared their stories about BraveNewCode and experiences with WPtouch, WPtouch Pro and WordTwit, our WordPress plugins.

We’ll be having more contests as we go along, so stay tuned to BraveNewCode on our blog, Twitter, and Facebook pages.

Best,
The BraveNewCode Team

Today marks the 2nd anniversary of BraveNewCode, something we’re very happy to say. When we started out Duane and I had no idea how any of this would turn out, and its been a ride and a blur in the past few years, and all of it worth it!

When we started out working on web projects, our pet project at the time came from a one-off plugin we used on a MatthewGood.org site re-design which included a mobile theme for Apple’s iPhone.

It was what would become WPtouch.

Originally we just wanted a cool theme to show on Apple’s then new iPhone, and soon it became apparent that others were interested in it for their own sites. Both Duane and myself have always been WordPress fanatics, and we wanted to give back to the community that we loved so much, so we offered WPtouch and other plugins like WordTwit and Earth Hour to show some love while we worked on client website projects.

WPtouch has grown a lot and changed a lot since then, and so too has BraveNewCode. We’re better coders and designers. We use better tools and strive for higher achievements. With WPtouch Pro we wanted to take things to the next level and do some pretty awesome stuff, so we knew we’d have to charge a little to invest the kind of time and dedication we know the project deserves. So far the response has been positive, and we thank all our current customers for supporting us and the WPtouch project.

So with all of that said, as BraveNewCode turns 2 we’re offering a nice giveaway to mark it, and make a lucky someone out there happy with a shiny new iPod touch + a WPtouch Pro license… free!

The Contest

To mark our anniversary and celebrate the recent release of WPtouch Pro, we’re giving away a new iPod touch and a 5-Pack WPtouch Pro license!

The lucky winner of our contest will receive:

• One 3rd Generation 32GB Apple iPod touch ($329 CAD value)
• One WPtouch Pro 5-Pack License ($59 CAD value)

How To Enter

The contest has now ended.

Rules and Stuff:

• No purchase necessary
• Have fun

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.