WordPress for BlackBerry Gets The Job Done
One of the main trademarks of RIM and its BlackBerrys are their famous QWERTY keyboards. I am not going to take sides in the iPhone vs. BlackBerry debate, but I will say that with phones like the BlackBerry Bold and Tour, and their fantastic keyboards, anything you can write out on your desktop, you should be able to write on your mobile device as well. This is true about Word documents, emails, and now blog posts.
I have heard many skeptics ask “how can you possibly write on such a small keyboard?” To that I say, try it out, and you will understand. I have written many blog posts on my way to work (not this one, although that might have been a cool idea) thanks to this useful app, and I basically find the BlackBerry WordPress app to be a user friendly application with almost all the functions I would need in order to create a blog post.
When first opening the app, you are asked to set up your blog, meaning add it to the app’s interface. That process is fast and easy, and never needs to be repeated. Once your blog is recognized by the app, it appears every time you launch the app with a large green check next to it. You can then click the Menu button and you are presented with a few options including Show Blog, Add Blog, Delete, Setup, Check Update, About, and Close. In order to perform the basic operations such as adding a post or editing one, you first need to click Show Blog.
When you first open your blog on the app, you have a basic screen offering the ability to view all your posts, pages, comments, options, or refresh the blog. When you choose to view your posts, which is what you will want to do 90% of the time, you have three options in the form of three little icons, write a new post, open a draft, or refresh. You can also go to an old post and select it to perform basic editing.
When writing a new post, you can add a title, tags, categories, and choose its status. Now here is where it gets tricky, at least for me. The available statuses are Pending Preview, Private, Draft, Published, and Local Draft. In any case, when writing a post, you will need to choose the status, and click Submit. Clicking Save Draft wont do the trick, which is kinda misleading, but once you figure that out, you should be OK. The addition that is only available here and not on the desktop is obviously the ability to save a local draft, which means it is not on the WordPress server, but saved in the app on your phone’s memory.
As I said, this is a very useful app that took me a few minutes to learn and master, and I have used countless times since. I would tweak the interface and options slightly if I had designed the app, but the app is updated so frequently, I believe it is just a matter of time before my criticism is implemented.
Our Rating: 3/5
Developer: WordPress
