On Formatting for the iPhone

Mobile devices, capable of browsing the Internet, are becoming more and more commonplace, and to make it easier for people on a mobile device, like an iPhone, I’ve had a mobile plugin for WordPress in my install, the WordPress Mobile Edition plugin, to reformat the blog into something mobile friendly.

Earlier in the week, I read this blog post about how WordPress.com was giving users of that service access to two different mobile formats — one iPhone/Touch specific, one for more generic mobile devices. The latter was done through the same WordPress Mobile Edition plugin I was using, and I was curious about the iPhone-specific plugin they were using, WPtouch.

I knew that there are about a dozen people who read this website through an iPhone, from London to Buenos Aires, from New York to Chicago to Seattle. I liked the screenshots in the WP.com blog post of what a WordPress blog looked like using WPtouch; more bells and whistles, a more inviting layout.

I downloaded the WPtouch plugin, uploaded the files, and set to configuring it.

For once, I was glad I had Safari on my system, so I could use its Developer Mode to see my website the way it would look on an iPhone.

There was actually very little to configure. I created an icon for the website, which is my first name written in Tolkien’s Tengwar alphabet. Then I had to select which pages I wanted to show in a dropdown menu and select the icons that went with each.

The options in the configuration page were generally straightforward. I overlooked the option to have comments show on static pages, and that was quickly rectified. I made one coding change under the hood; for commenters without Gravatars, I wanted the WPtouch theme to default to custom Wavatars instead of a faceless body.

It looks good, in Safari anyway. Hopefully the dozen iPhone regulars here will agree. 🙂