WordPress for BlackBerry 1.2 released!
WordPress for BlackBerry 1.2 is just released, and we are working on the next release since few days. You can look our roadmap on the prj trac site, feel free to suggest new features and improvements on this site.
Mark Smalley 5:58 am on June 16, 2010 Permalink |
Thanks for all of the work on this awesome extension of WordPress Danilo.
Do you have any idea when we might start seeing custom post types show-up in the mobile apps?
Is there anything we can do as plugin or theme developers that will allow us to hook into the apps or push our new custom post types to these apps…?
Danilo 9:22 pm on June 16, 2010 Permalink |
Custom post types support within WordPress for BlackBerry will not available in the near future.
For what it’s worth, WordPress for BlackBerry has the ability to allow post authors to assign custom fields to a post. So, where applicable, you can use custom fields and achieving more complex actions.
Mark Smalley 1:36 am on June 17, 2010 Permalink |
That’s a shame – as Automattic seems to have put so much effort into getting these custom post types ready for WordPress 3.0, but developers will not be able to plug into them from mobile devices, thus making the custom post types somehow alien in nature.
The only choices for developers wanting to do new things with the mobile applications is to download the source and branch-out on their own, making alternative versions of the mobile applications that communicate with their new custom post types, and this would start to make things really complicated and confusing for the end-user.
Can you offer any suggestion on how we might be able to bump the priority of this, not just for BlackBerry but for all mobile apps? Should we be mentioning it on the forums somewhere, can you pass along the request or what…?
Other than that, the only other option I think of is to tag things as post as then build something to automatically can post types to other post types if tagged with a specific custom field or something, but again, from an end-users point of view, this is very ugly and confusing.
As developers, we really need some form of flexibility with the mobile applications, and API, a way to add plugins or something, something where the community can help or contribute without having to explicitly learn the fundamentals of mobile development.
We need hooks, filters, or something – I’m not sure what, but am really hoping you could be the one to tell us what we need and somehow get the rest of Automattic to listen – either way, I must commend you and the rest of the mobile teams on all of the work you have done in such a short period of time and look forward to the future.
All the best and thanks for listening (or reading as the case may be)…
Mark Smalley 6:18 am on June 17, 2010 Permalink |
In the meantime, I’ve updated gPress to scan for geo_public and generate a map should it be in use – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gpress/ – this allows people to tag posts from their mobile applications, after which, they can always switch the post type…
Danilo 7:38 am on June 18, 2010 Permalink |
Hi Mark,
The best solution is making an alternative version of the mobile application that communicate with the server using your new custom post types format. Otherwise, your solution based on custom field that triggers an event on the server side could be a good compromise (of course, just for a rapid solution).
In details, WordPress for BlackBerry uses XML-RPC protocol for communication with WordPress. Other client apps are using the same protocol or AtomPub.
So a lot of works on the server side are needed to expose methods on the XML-RPC layer that enable custom post types on external client. Moreover, on the client side are necessary lot of changes on the UI front, that must adapt to custom post types and so on.
Probably custom posts type will be supported in the future, but at this moment there are other tasks on the working list, in particular we are working on features related to accessing/reading your blog from the mobile apps.
btw, i’ve passed your request to Automattic side.
Mark Smalley 8:26 am on June 18, 2010 Permalink |
Thanks for taking the time to make a detailed reply, it really is much appreciated. Of the two options, neither of them are ideal, so we will try to focus our energies on our core functions and hope that the mobile applications have caught up with us by the time we get there…
If our hands were forced, we would probably work on forking the mobile applications to specifically serve our new post types, as the server side stuff is certainly going to be confusing for the general public and messy for the developers.
Thanks again Danilo
Mark Smalley 2:17 pm on June 25, 2010 Permalink |
Me again…
Just discovered that it seems the BlackBerry app does not support WordPress 3.0 MS Blogs either, is this correct…? It can’t find the xmlrpc.php file due to it obviously being in the root folder.
Is this the same with all the WordPress mobile apps, or just the BlackBerry one?
Do you know of any easy hacks that can be made on the server side to support multi-sites?
Danilo 10:05 pm on June 27, 2010 Permalink |
Hi Mark,
There is a unique XML-RPC end point for each blog, instead of just one for the whole WordPress 3.0 MS install. You will have to enable the XML-RPC endpoint for each blog and then you should add each blog to the app using the correct XML-RPC endpoint.
Mark Smalley 3:30 am on June 29, 2010 Permalink |
I tried that – will try again though…
Let’s say root install is at http://smalley.my/gpress/ and I have another blog set-up at http://smalley.my/gpress/ms-features/ – would that mean the new end-point is http://smalley.my/gpress/ms-features/xmlrpc.php …?
If so, that’s what I tried the first few times – but will try again and report back.
Thanks again for the assistance and congratulations on 1.3 launch, will download and give it a test run whilst testing this MS functionality again…
Mark Smalley 3:40 am on June 29, 2010 Permalink |
Yeah, no luck for me!
It first says it cannot find the end-point and asks me to add manually, so assuming the end point should be http://smalley.my/gpress/ms-features/xmlrpc.php – I then get the “loadBlogs error”
Danilo 8:20 am on June 29, 2010 Permalink |
Hi Mark,
did you try with the latest beta? we have fixed some issues with self-hosted MS installation. It should works fine.
Mark Smalley 4:04 am on June 30, 2010 Permalink |
Danilo
I downloaded the BETA version and can confirm that the MS functionality now seems to work – it did however pop-up with a warning saying something like “cannot add this blog due to name already existing” but after clicking ok, the sub-blog nonetheless showed-up.
Thanks again for the update…