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!

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

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!

Ms. Beck and her new iPod touch courtesy of us!

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:

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.

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!

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.

Long Overdue, But Worth The Wait

It’s been a long time coming, but we’re getting close enough to WPtouch 2.0 to talk about some of its features and enhancements, trials and tribulations, and what’s in store beyond the 2.0 milestone.

Though not due out for another 3-4 weeks or more, we fully expect to have both the WPtouch 1.9 and WPtouch 2.0 releases available sooner in beta form as there are many under-the-hood changes which we’d like our loyal users to test out first before we launch it far and wide.

If you’re interested in becoming a beta tester send us an e-mail and we’ll put you on the list.

Nearing 100,000 Downloads on WordPress.org

While we’re technically well past that mark if you combine our separate site stats with WordPress.org stats, we’re quite excited to have the repository downloads nearing the 100k mark.

To celebrate, we’ll be having a little contest for WPtouch 2.0 in the order of theme development and the possibility of winning an iPod touch for your efforts. But more on that in a post to come soon, this one’s about the roadmap : )

Where We Were

With WPtouch we’ve revolutionized the possibilities of delivering a full-featured WordPress website on a touch mobile device, all without the experience affecting or depending upon your existing theme. Make changes to your desktop theme, and WPtouch won’t be any worse for wear. Change plugins, WordPress versions, and even upgrade WPtouch and have your settings and custom icons saved.

We’ve added a ton of features over the revision cycles, all while hardening the plugin and resolving many bugs and issues as they cropped up.

We originally thought we’d get to 2.0 by the fall of last year, but that quickly became impossible, and a little impromptu on our part. Instead, we focused on incremental evolutionary growth of the plugin such that when the moniker ’2.0′ was applied, it would be a logical, well-thought-out, destined release which made sense to our users and left little to complain about (we shoot high, you know).

Where We Are

Currently we’re at that crossroad with the plugin where it needs to grow in a couple directions, and we’re aiming to do just that with the next couple of releases.

What’s Lacking

Currently the two major areas we see the plugin lacking in are internationalization and theming. Let’s tackle internationalization, first.

As with all plugins for WordPress, they should be internationalized, and it’s not that hard to do so from a technical perspective. What is hard to do in our case is make sure that the plugin is fully internationalized in a stable manner— i.e. that we don’t change or add to the text in the admin panel and the theme files too much.

At current, there is still some considerable fluctuation in these departments and instead of having our internationalization team constantly working to revise translations, we’re trying to settle on the text beforehand so there’s little in the way of revisions or changes to language.

Our goal is to ship WPtouch 1.9 with 5 languages supported, and ship WPtouch 2.0 with at least 10, maybe 12. From there we hope other translators jump in and add more.

Themes

Currently WPtouch alludes to having support for Themes (what with our ‘wptouch/themes’ directory and all) but it in fact does not support multiple templates at all, just the default one.

It was always our intention to add user-selectable theme support, but there’s been some hang-ups and snags along the way in doing this, so we decided instead to focus on the heart of the plugin first before we continued on theme support development.

We wanted to support multiple Themes for obvious reasons, but we also wanted to do it in such a way that made it simple for our users and other developers to create themes and easily share them with others.

To make this possible we’ve gone to the whiteboard several times in order to figure out the best method to meet these criteria:

• Themes must be able to be easily added, and selected
• Themes must survive updates to WPtouch and WordPress without issue
• It must be very simple for a developer or someone who wants to make modifications to the Default theme to be able to do so without breaking their website or WPtouch itself
• Themes capability must allow for and include an easy way for us to add new features and for Theme developers to add the features to their Themes without much muss and fuss
• Theme support can’t be bulky- it’s got to be just as fast and efficient as WPtouch currently is

If some of those criterion seem trivial, you’re mistaken- they’re all quite difficult to achieve on their own, let alone together.

What some may not realize is that WPtouch is truly unlike most other plugins out there- we’re re-performing some of the same functions that WordPress itself utilizes to pull heavy weight and do all that WPtouch does. With other plugins there may only be a few hundred lines of code, while with WPtouch you’ve got thousands including the admin files and all the theme files.

So its taken us quite some time to determine the best approach to handling Themes, and we think we’ve found it with the invention of a theme creation method we’re calling CoreTheme.

CoreTheme

The WPtouch CoreTheme is based on the working combination of a Theme folder (in this case, the Default one) and the Core folder.

The Core folder contains only files automatically imported into your active theme, and contains all the features and capabilities of WPtouch separated from the editable theme structure & content of your theme.

A Theme folder contains all the modifiable elements of a theme, without breaking the Core features and functions. It also contains information required to be shown and selected in the WordPress WPtouch admin panel. This information is read from the theme’s readme.txt file. A theme folder can also contain a screenshot.png image to be shown in WordPress WPtouch admin panel, helping users choose and select a preferred theme easily.

Together, the Core and the Theme folders make up a theme.

Minimum Theme Requirements

A Custom WPtouch Theme must have the following files in order to work:

• - header.php
• - index.php
• - footer.php
• - style.css
• - readme.txt
• - screenshot.png

Skeleton Theme

You can create a new theme by simply copying the ‘default’ theme and re-naming it, then begin modifying it to build a custom theme.

We’ve also included a ‘skeleton’ theme which is stripped down and contains very little customization, just the minimum + the dependencies on CoreTheme so you can build it up however you like. This is by far the easiest path to a custom theme which bears all the markings of a design you want.

Creating A Custom Core

Just because WPtouch ships with a ready-made Core doesn’t mean you can’t make your own.

To customize the Core files, simply copy a file or files from the Core folder into your Theme folder, and start editing.

WPtouch always looks for the Core files in your Theme folder first, and if it doesn’t find it, defaults to the Core folder and uses its files instead.

This way you can still use some default Core elements, while modifying others. The choice is up to you.

There’s no limit here- you can customize an entire Core for yourself, keeping in mind that features that are missing in your Core that exist in WPtouch’s Core will cause the corresponding admin options to become neutered.

Public Beta

We’ll have public betas available for download of both WPtouch 1.9 and WPtouch 2.0, and we’ll post about them when they’re released. To find out the super-secret plans on these betas you can follow us on Twitter, or keep checking your WPtouch admin panel and watch our WPtouch news and updates list for posts on the subject.

Down The Road

Beyond WPtouch 2.0 we’d like to be able to offer the ability to take Themes even further, and offer the ability to serve different themes and subsets of themes to different devices and classes of devices. I’d love to see the ability to serve a theme for iPhone/iPod users, BlackBerry users, and less capable devices, all at the same time from within the admin.

Additionally there are other requests we’ll be looking to include, most of which are suggested by our users in our Support Forums. If you haven’t visited yet, stop by and you’ll find bug reports, fixes, suggestions, and helpful tips and tricks.

The update is recommended for all users. Please visit the WPtouch homepage for install and setup instructions, or visit the Support Forums for tips, tricks, and support from fellow WPtouch users and BraveNewCode staff.

Below is the complete changelog for 1.8.8 1.8.9 1.8.9.1:

• Fixed refresh issue (some pages keep re-loading)
• Fixed mkdir issue on PHP4 installations
• Set viewport to fixed width for device to prevent some sites from loading wide
• Minor revisions to new CSS calendar icon styling
• Added exclusive mode feature to help in situations where other plugins are incompatible, load too many scripts/css files and both break and slow down WPtouch
• Added Fancybox for some feature descriptions in the admin

We’re headed off to Mexico this week, but we wanted to ship out an update to WPtouch before we left. Originally we planned on just fixing a couple bugs, but (as with most times we try to just do a little fix) we ended up making some good additions, too.

We know that some of the issues discussed in the comments haven’t quite been addressed yet, but we’re tackling them as we can, so please be patient if yours has been answered in an update yet.

What’s New?

First of all, we think we’ve tackled lingering upload issues, both to do with windows hosted WordPress sites, and mime types for images not being recognized. Next, we fixed some ugly admin styling issues, and the WPtouch looks sparkling again on IE7+, Mozilla and Webkit-based browsers. We’ve also fixed issues related to the posting of ajax comments, Links page favicons, and more. Here’s the complete changelog:

• Fixed missing mime types for icon upload through IE7
• Fixed issues related to automatic favicon generation on a Links page
• Changed footer switch links to mimic iPhone settings app appearance
• Fixed misc scenarios for ajax-upload errors
• Fixed path issues related to custom icons (sites on windows servers)
• Fixed issues related to ajax comments not working in some situations
• Added check for ‘Allow Comments’ on pages
• Fixed hidden Apache error (reported in logs)
• Fixed admin styling issues on IE7, Firefox

One More Thing…

We’ve really sexed up the footer switch link- it now mimics the iPhone/iPod touch’s settings app on/off toggle. It’s a small addition but one we should’ve implemented a long time ago, because it just seems so natural : )

To get the update, you can upgrade through the WordPress 2.5+ admin, or download here.

There’s been a considerable number of changes that are detailed in the readme.txt file, but we’re including most of them here with some extra notes.

Under The Hood The Engine Got A Scrub Down

Duane spent considerable time re-writing the core admin code, optimizing and restructuring the way WPtouch works its magic. Over and above the obvious reasons for doing this, we’re preparing for full tilt-a-whirl action with the release of WPtouch 2.0, a significant upgrade which will deliver the long-awaited internationalization and theme features.

As with any major change, we’ve done the best we could to test under a variety of conditions, but hope that feedback from you, our user, will help us weed out any additional hiccups as a result.

Manual Icons Are Bygone

Finally we’ve delivered a proper mechanism for the management of your custom icons through WPtouch. The upgrade to WPtouch is the last time you’ll have to say good bye to your custom icons with an upgrade, and have to manually replace them. With WPtouch 1.8 you can upload and delete your custom icons from the WPtouch admin panel, and future upgrades to both WPtouch and WordPress won’t affect your custom selections.

You’ve Got Style! More Options, Background Choices

We’ve has several requests to open up our rigid ways and allow for more customization of style options. While we do see the merit in this, part of our rigidity has to do with plans to allow for custom themes with WPtouch 2.0, thereby creating the ability for everyone to create tweaked versions of WPtouch or really unique, totally customized themes.

But WPtouch 2.0 is stilla few months away, so in the mean time we’ve added a few more style options.

So, added in this update is:

• The abilty to decide if paragraphs should be full width (default) or left-aligned
• The ability to choose between three different scales of font sizes
  (Regular, Medium & Large)
• The ability to choose between 3 different pinstripe background images
  (Classic, Horizontal, Diagonal)

Finding The Path To Home: Bug Fixes

We’ve fixed a number of path issues with WPtouch 1.8. As WPtouch is a complex plugin with features and functions that far surpass the average plugin its more difficult than it seems to bring all these great and advanced features to all kinds of WordPress users, hosting WordPress in unique ways. So we do our best with each successive update to make sure WPtouch looks in all the right places to find the things it needs to know about your WordPress install to work for you.

You Say Login, I Say Logout

There have been a few bugs related to login/out features working on some versions of WordPress, and we think we’ve solved them all. If you’ve had an issue related to this, please update and check to see if we’ve resolved it and report back.

We’ve also fixed a number of other minor issues, all of which are listed in the readme.txt file that accompanies the plugin .zip file.

Salam! Kaixo! Hej! Aloha! Salut! Hello!

WPtouch 1.8 has been prepared for internationalization. Over the coming weeks we’ll be working with some great volunteers to deliver WPtouch 1.9 in at least 5 languages, and we’ll work to try and at least double that for WPtouch 2.0. If you think you can help us accomplish this, please drop an e-mail to wptouch@bravenewcode.com and let us know what lingo you’re fluent in. If it’s a language not yet added, we’ll send the project details for you to help us out on Launchpad.

Coming Soon… And Then There Were Themes

With WPtouch 2.0, you’ll be able to do the same with themes. Custom style sheets, and even entire themes built off of the new core theme capabilities will bring the same great theming possibilities of WordPress itself to WPtouch. Stay tuned for information on our theme contest.

There’s a batch more things in this update, if you’re interested checkout the full list of changes here.

The way WordPress upgrades plugins is out of our control- so when you upgrade through the admin each time a plugin is moved out of the plugin folder, and the new one unzipped into it while the old is deleted.

What we can control is the creation of a folder for WPtouch in the WordPress uploads folder, which won’t be touched by WordPress, even when you upgrade WordPress itself.

With WPtouch 1.8 you’ll be able to upload your custom icons (securely) and select & activate them- and even delete them! And each time we release a new update you’ll never have to worry about your custom icons disappearing again.

We’ve also worked on hardening WPtouch a little and fixing some more bugs, so we think it’s a great update for everyone.

Look for it soon.

If you’ve downloaded 1.7-1.7.4, please update to 1.7.5 to fix the issues identified post-release.

First of all, a big thanks to everyone who posted in the comments, left us tweets and mailed in to report on the state of WPtouch 1.6 and the kinds of bugs they experienced & features they’d like to see— your feedback is invaluable to us.

We’re driving hard toward the big 2.0 release, which will see some remarkable changes, including (finally) localization for international users and themes. WPtouch 2.0 will ship with 3 default themes to choose from, to further customize your site’s appearance on the iPhone, iPod touch, Android and soon, Blackberry Storm.

We’ll also be adding a small documentation guide for aspiring designers and developers to work on their own WPtouch themes, which we’ll index and provide for download for free on the website. To stimulate some growth here, we’ll be having a contest with some good prizes for those who create some stellar themes. It’ll be a great time for WPtouch users the world over.

WPtouch 1.7.5

We considered issuing a small maintenance release to fix a couple of missed bugs with 1.6, but instead decided to hold off as they weren’t widespread and turn our focus to continuing to add features alongside solving pesky issues.

Below is the complete changelog for 1.7.5:

• Added option to do GZIP compression
• Added ability to choose if WPtouch or regular version of your site is shown first
• Fixed WP login/out button bugs
• Added login/out auto-detect for WP 2.7 or pre-WP 2.7 sites
• Fixed loading path issue that caused drop-down menu button to fail
• Added choice between alphabetical or page order sorting of the drop down menu
• Added clock icon
• Minor admin fixes & changes (+ better Mozilla browser support)
• Fixes for categories drop-down menu (now shows post #’s)
• Automatic detection & support for Peter’s anti-spam plugin
• Built-in support for Adsense in posts
• Moved Stats tracking box beside Advertising Options
• Better WordPress version support detection
• More refined image auto-sizing with WP added images & galleries in posts / pages
• Fix for WordPress shortcodes appearing in excerpts
• Changed how WPtouch shows switch links
• Auto-adjusting width/height for MobileSafari plugin objects (YouTube, Quicktime)
• 1.7.1: Fixed re-direct bug when viewing default theme from mobile device
• 1.7.2: Fixed missing Android support
• 1.7.3: Fixed broken login link on some installations
• 1.7.4: Fixed a warning that occurred when multiple gzip handlers were enabled

Download

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?

We’re working on better Android support, built-in tie-in with WordTwit & twitter, localization, themes & more. Stay tuned.

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.

Running WP Super Cache in full-on mode actually bypasses WordPress in a lot of cases, and serves a cached version of the web page instead. This leads to problems with WPtouch and inconsistent behaviour, since sometimes a cache file from the normal web version is shown to a WPtouch user.

There are a few different ways to address this problem, and we might take a stab at adding an option in the WPtouch back-end at some point to help deal with this. A temporary solution (in theory) is to add this line to your .htaccess file in the two sections where WP Super Cache modifies it:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.+iPhone

You can see a full example here:


# BEGIN WPSuperCache

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.*[^/]$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.*//.*$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !=POST
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !.*=.*
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Cookie} !^.*(comment_author_|wordpress|wp-postpass_).*$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.+(iPhone|iPod|aspen|dream|android|BlackBerry9500|BlackBerry9530)RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Encoding} gzip
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html.gz -f
RewriteRule ^(.*) /wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html.gz [L]

# END WPSuperCache


This should cause the Super Cache portion of WP Super Cache to bypass the static cached files whenever it is accessed by an iPhone. You will still need to add the iPhone word to the list of rejected user agents in the WP Super Cache admin.

If you have success with this method, please let us know as we’ve only done limited testing with it.

It’s not that we didn’t fix the annoying white page bug, that’s fixed. Nor is it any other issue which is causing us delays. It’s simply that the holidays have roped us, and we’ve also got some client commitments which must be completed before we ship out a plugin update (gotta pay the bills, folks). The only remaining task is ensuring that the plugin’s admin interface looks good on both 2.7 and pre-2.7 releases, and we should have that done soon.

Hope everyone is having a good holiday,

~BNC

• Added support for WordPress image galleries
• Added support for single post page split navigation
• Fixed admin footer links which did not locate WordPress install correctly
• Added basic Google Android support
• Changes in WPtouch admin appearance and styling
• Added donate message in WPtouch admin
• WPtouch now supports WordPress 2.3 or higher

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