Using the Web Site

When you log in, you will see a search page like you would see for any search engine. It has the current trending topics, if you wanted to check out what is popular on Twitter.

When you search for something, then the search results are shown in the image below. On the left-hand corner, you can decide what timeline you want to choose from. Also, you can select if you want to search the web, photos, or actual tweets. However, viewing the web allows you to view the tweets as well because the listing has the tweet below.

If you decide to log in with your Twitter user ID and password, you will see a home page that shows all of the things that you have posted on social media networks, how many times people have tweeted the same link, and information, like your web site, that Twitter account is associated with.

On March 3rd, Topsy introduced alerts. You can get search results right to your inbox.

Adding a Topsy Button To Your WordPress Site

Like Tweetmeme, Topsy allows you to place a retweet button on your site. If you are using a WordPress site, there are two ways to add their button on your site: WordPress plugin and Javascript version.

The Topsy WordPress plugin is easy to install. After installing the plugin, you will go to Settings to customize the button. One thing that I like about Topsy, that I haven’t seen with other retweet buttons is that it gives you a wide range of options on where to display the retweet button. If you don’t want it on all your pages, then you can pick-and-choose which ones you want to place them on. You can also add your own CSS.

I like the fact that you can change the color scheme to fit your site/blog. Also, that if you delete or update your blog, you are able to notify Topsy, and they will be sure to reflect that on their end. Very useful.

The trackback feature is pretty nifty because you can create trackbacks if someone leaves a comment. Not sure if I like this “Only create trackback comments from influential tweeters.“ How can they know that? If I have a technology-type site/blog, the people I find influential are going to be different if I had a fashion site/blog. This is what it states on their site: “On our website, roughly the top 0.2% most influential of all Twitter users are tagged “Highly Influential”, and “Influential” tags appear for the top 0.5% most influential Twitter users.” I would love to hear from Topsy creators to figure out their calculation.

Topsy is an interesting search engine and application. I like the layout and the search display on their web site. It’s also great that they have a user profile that allows you to see how your tweets are doing. However, with Google and Yahoo! partnering up with Twitter and having tweets as part of their search results, Topsy has to find a way to keep things interesting. Their WordPress plugin is one of the most flexible ones that I have seen when it comes to retweeting buttons. However, this “influential” tweeter trackback feature kind of threw me off. Overall, Topsy has potential.

Have you used Topsy retweet button on your site?

How To Integrate Topsy Into Your WordPress Site originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Simply said, PubSubHubbub (aka as PuSH in short) is publish/subscribe protocol addon to the current Atom/RSS technology. It enables your RSS subscribers to instantly receive your feed as soon as you publish your content.

What exactly does PubSubHubbub do?

Previously, when you publish a content, it doesn’t get push to the feed aggregator automatically. Instead, the feed aggregator poll your site (RSS feed) at regular interval and check if you have new content. If yes, it will then broadcast to your subscribers. With this push technology, there is often a delay in syndication and it could be several hours after your content went live before your RSS subscriber can read it on their RSS reader software.

PubSubHubbub aims to get rid of this time-delaying barrier and make everything real time. This means that as soon as you publish the content, your end subscriber will also receive it instantly. The technology is simple. Instead of the feed aggregator constantly polling your site for new content, it will now act as a hub. Whenever you publish a new content, you notify the hub, which in turn send your update to the end user.

You can watch the interesting video below for better understanding.

Sound simple, but how do I implement it in WordPress?

Feedburner way

Now, if you are using Feedburner to manage your feed, your site is already PuSH enabled. You just need to turn on the service in the Feedburner Dashboard.

Go to Feedburner and login to your account (most likely is your Google account).

Click on the Publicize tab at the top.

On the left, click Pingshot.

Click the Activate button to enable the service.

That’s it.
(You may also want to ensure that http://ping.feedburner.com is in your ping list)

Custom feed

If you are using the default WordPress feed rather than Feedburner, there are several plugins that you can use to PuSH-enabled your blog

1. PuSHPress

PuSHPress is the plugin used in WordPress.com. There is no configuration required. Simply activate the plugin and you are good to go.

The big difference in this plugin compared to the other PuSH WordPress plugins is that it includes a PuSH hub built in.

Download PuSHPress here

2. PubSubHubbub

Another simple plugin that requires minimal configuration.

This plugin does not implement a hub, but it allows you to select which hubs you want to ping. The default is Demo hub on Google App Engine and SuperFeedr.

Download PubSubHubbub here

3. WP Pubsubhubbub

This plugin is functionally similar to the PubSubHubbub plugin mentioned above. It allows you to specify the hubs you want to ping as well, so choosing this or the other is really dependent on individual preferences.

Download WP PubSubHubbub here

Have you started implementing PubSubHubbub in your WordPress blog?

What is PubSubHubbub and How to Implement It In WordPress originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Firstly, in your theme folder, open the functions.php file and insert the following function to the end of the file.

if(function_exists('add_theme_support')){
    add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );
}

Save and upload the file back to the server.

Now in your Post/Page edit section, you will find a Set thumbnail option in the rightmost column (just below the Categories section).

Click on it. The image uploader window will appear. You can either new image (or select from Gallery) the picture to be used as the thumbnail. Once you have uploaded, click on the use as thumbnail option.

Save the post.

Getting the thumbnail to appear in the front end

To get the thumbnail image to appear, you need to insert the function

if ( has_post_thumbnail() ) {
	    // the current post has a thumbnail
	} else {
	    // the current post lacks a thumbnail
	}

in your theme files. The most likely place is index.php, single.php and page.php

Check out Mark Jaquith’s article for more detail on the usage of the thumbnail function.

Snippet: Adding Post Thumbnail in WordPress 2.9 originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Take this as my letter to WordPress (and Matt Mullenweg) and I seriously hope they can add the following features to the core in the future.

Let’s begin!

1. Database Backup/Export/Import

Being a database driven CMS, I am surprise that the default WP installation does not come with a way for you to backup your database. The Export feature is almost useless as it contains only contain your posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags and none of the database settings that you have painstakingly set up over the years. And if you have a big blog (with tons of content), I can assure you that the Export feature is not going to work very well.

With a native database export/import function, it will be easy for the end users to backup their database and also to migrate to another server without any loss of settings.

Currently, the plugins that allow backing up of database include WP-DB-Backup and WP-DBManager

2. Contact Form

Contact form is a simple, yet essential component for every website, yet WordPress doesn’t think it is important enough to include it in the core. End users who need to create contact forms have to resort to plugins like Contact Form 7, cFormsII to create contact form for their sites. Most CMS come with this contact form creation capability, so why not WordPress?

3. Disable display of wp version in the meta tag

Everyone knows the risk of placing your wp version in the <head> tag, except for the WordPress team. Instead of removing the versioning from the meta tag, they make it appear automatically (whether you like it or not) since WP2.5 and does not provide an easy way for you to remove it. Can you imagine installing a plugin just to remove the wp-version tag? What a waste of resources.

To remove the wp version from your meta tag, you can add the following hook to your theme’s functions.php file

add_filter( 'the_generator', create_function('$a', "return null;") );

or use the following plugins: WP Security Scan or Secure WordPress

4. Changing of wp table prefix during installation

WordPress uses wp_ as the default database table prefix and we all know how dangerous that can be. Most people don’t change the table prefix simply because they don’t know how to, or they are not able to (if installed via Fantasico). Yes, I know, you can change the table prefix in the wp-config.php file before installing, but how many people really do that? In my opinion, during the installation process, there should be a field for the users to specify their preferred table prefix.

For those who wanted to change their current wp table prefix, here’s how you can do it.

5. More control over the user roles/capabilities

Have you ever wondered what is the differences between an Editor, Author and a Contributor role? I would appreciate if there is a small paragraph within the User section that explains the capabilities of each role, or a simple link that points to the WordPress documentation site.

In addition, there are plenty of time when we need to limit (or expand) the capabilities of a particular role and there is no way to do that in the native WordPress installation. Users have to use the role-manager plugin to change the capabilities of each role.

6. Choose your own admin username

The default username for administrator is, as you have guessed it, admin. Is it so difficult to let the users choose their own administrative login name during the installation process?

7. Support for mobile devices

WordPress.com realized the importance of mobile visitors (more than 60 million page views come from mobile phones per month for WordPress.com blogs) and have activated a mobile theme (to be more precise, the WpTouch plugin) for mobile users. The mobile support feature is integrated into WordPress.com and users can choose to enable/disable the mobile theme in the settings.

Isn’t it time for the users of self-hosted WordPress to get the same treatment too?

Those who want to activate mobile support for your WP blogs can install the plugins: WPTouch, WordPress Mobile Pack and wp-pda

What’s your say? What other features do you think should be included in the WP core?

Image credit: Peregrino Will Reign

7 Important Features That Should Be Part Of WordPress Core originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Find the CSS file of your blog template

If your blog is on Wordpress then the CSS file is placed ideally in the themes folder under wp-content/themes/yourtheme. To know the exact location, open your blog and check the page source. You will find a link to the CSS of your theme as shown below

If your blog is on Blogger, open the Blogger dashboard and go to the “Layout” tab. Select “Edit HTML” and the checkbox “expand widget templates”. Next, copy the CSS code in a notepad file defined just after the opening body tag.

Download a copy of that file and do the modifications described in this tutorial. It would be better if you take a backup of the stylesheet for if things go wrong, you can restore your site’s design by using the backup.

Optimize the CSS code

Format your CSS code

The first step towards optimization of any CSS code is proper formatting. You should carefully format the style elements and the attributes so that they are easy to understand. Moreover, the code should be written so that they do not overlap with other classes or ID’s. Formatting the code manually is a tough job and you can use the Format CSS tool to get started.

Copy the style sheet which you want to format and paste it in the text box. Next, select the preferred rules of formatting from the right panel.

For example: You may want to insert a new line after the CSS property of each div tag. You may also want to remove all the white spaces placed after a semicolon. Set all the rules which you want the program to perform and then hit the “Format CSS” button. All the specified rules would be applied and the code will be formatted as shown below:

Optimize CSS to remove redundancies

Now that you have formatted your code for readability, it’s time for some optimization. Go to Online CSS optimizer and paste the entire code in the text box provided. You may also enter the URL of your CSS file, if you want.

This tool can be used for the following purposes:

• convert all the RGB color values to hexadecimal thus reducing overhead and increasing efficiency.
• remove all the comments and white spaces.
• optimize the border values to modern metrics. For example: the attribute border: 2px 5px 2px 5px is changed to border: 2px 5px;.
• convert absolute values to relative ones. For example: the attribute font-size:18px; can be changed into font-size:2em;
• converts multiple background, font, margin, padding, list attributes into a single attribute.

Clean Your CSS File and reduce Size

Now it’s time to clean your CSS code for errors and reduce the file size. Reducing the size of CSS is important as it affects the load time of your blog’s pages. Go to Clean CSS and paste the CSS code which you optimized in the earlier step. Select the compression mode as highest and select the options shown below

Clean CSS is based on CSS Tidy and can be used to merge shorthand properties, compress colors and font weights. A similar tool for compressing CSS code for faster loading is CSS Drive.

Some Tips

Following are some tips and tricks you should keep in mind while writing the CSS code for your blog’s template:

1. Always use external stylesheets rather than pasting the entire code before the </head> tag.

2. Use universal classes to avoid repetitions. For example: you can use a simple class div.floatleft{float:left;} to float any element to left rather than using the same attribute on multiple classes.

3. Use browser specific CSS files for fixing bugs. That means, if you spot a bug which occurs only in a particular browser ( generally Internet explorer 6 or older versions), use a separate style sheet to fix that bug. This keeps your main style sheet neat and clean.

For Wordpress bloggers: Apart from optimizing the CSS code, you must check out how to reduce blog’s page load time and how you should clean up the Wordpress database.

Have you optimized the CSS of your blog template yet? What are your favorite tools for optimizing CSS code? Share your ideas in the comments section.

3 Useful Tools To Optimize your Blog’s CSS originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Although most blog services and blogging content management systems allow users to post directly on their websites, there are many advantages to using client software on a local computer, such as the ability to work offline. In past years, KDE had no full-featured blogging client.

Then, along came Kblogger, which was originally a panel applet and began to slowly morph into a full client. Another project called Bilbo finally emerged as a true full-featured client and working in conjunction with the Kblogger developers, managed to develop a blogging client that is now included in KDE releases.  Due to trademark issues, they changed the name to Blogilo, and will release it with KDE 4.4.

Blogilo featurs a WYSIWIG editor and support for Blogger 1.0, MetaWeblog, MovableType, Wordpress, and Google GData APIs. With it, users can create, modify, schedule, and delete posts. The right column is called the “toolbox” and includes tabs containing the most recent blog posts from a user’s blog, post categories, options such as whether to enable comments, and local entries not uploaded to the blog.

Because the main editing window is WYSIWYG, the toolbar includes typical word precessing-like features: bold, italics, font size and color, and spell check. Users can also add images directly from their computers (uploaded with the blog’s API) or from the the Web.

Despite the outstanding features, Blogilo does have its limitations. I could not find a way to use the graphical interface to set some styles, such as floating an image to the left or right. Its alignment tool seems to work on text, but those users who insist on following XHTML standards will find that Blogilo is a little loose in this area.  Fortunately, it also includes an HTML editor if users need to add styles rather than using the client’s own formatting tools.

Getting Started

Setup is very easy with Blogilo. Simply click “Blog” in the menu, followed by “Add Blog…” This will open a dialog asking you for four things: A title for the blog, your blog’s URL, your username, and your password.  If you click “Auto-configure” Blogilo will magically seek out your blog, login, fetch the latest posts and categories, and have you ready to start posting. You can also manually specify the settings and then click OK.

Typing a post is a pretty natural experience and normally goes without a hitch. If you need to stop in the middle of a post, you can click the “Save Locally” button or save a draft on the server by clicking submit and checking “save entry as draft”. Once you are finished, you can preview your post within Blogilo and view it using your blog’s own CSS styles.

Since Blogilo is a native KDE app, you can manipulate widgets like the Toolbox, moving it to the left side or even detaching it, forming its own separate window. It also supports KDE’s auto spell check to correct your spelling as you type. Furthermore, it allows you to open or create multiple posts, which are all conveniently tabbed and easily accessible.

Overall, I have found the blogging client very reliable and feature-rich. I have corresponded with the developers on more than one occasion and found them to be easily approachable and willing to quickly fix any of the early bugs. With this official KDE release, Blogilo seems more than ready to take on any new tasks that come its way, even if that includes changing its name a second time.

Blogilo: KDE’s blogging client originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

I recommend that before you begin, you familiarize yourself with the WordPress file structure by analyzing as many WordPress themes as you can (Note: You need to have a basic understanding of HTML and CSS.)

Getting Started

Begin you begin coding up the theme, you must understand that the WP theme is just like any other HTML webpage, except that it is coded with PHP. Even so, you don’t need to be a PHP expert to do up a WP theme. My advice is:

1. First get a working pure HTML page up and running (You can easily do this with a WYSIWYG webpage editor).
2. Open the HTML webpage in a text editor and slice it up to different portion (we’ll explain more on that later)
3. Insert in the PHP code

WordPress File Structure

The basic file structure of a WordPress theme is as follows:

1. Style.css – The stylesheet holds all the formatting and styles of the theme
2. Index.php – This is the main WordPress theme file that ties all the other files together
3. Header.php – Holds all the header information. Also, if all the files were lumped together, this would be the beginning of the WordPress theme
4. Sidebar.php – It has all the code for the sidebar
5. Footer.php – Holds the footer code

Other files that you will also find in a WordPress theme are:

1. Single.php – A single blog post code
2. Comments.php – This is where you place the code to control the behavior of the blog comments
3. Page.php - Controls the behavior of your individual pages
4. Search.php – This is if you want to add search capability to your WordPress theme
5. Searchform.php – Controls the way the search box behaves
6. 404.php – Customize the landing page if your readers get an 404 error
7. Functions.php – A way to further customize your WordPress theme
8. Archives php – How to display the archive results

A simple layout of the theme

Once you have got your HTML webpage ready, you can begin to slice up using the above layout as a guide.

To begin, you can either use an existing WordPress theme as a starting point (the WordPress default theme is a good one to start with. You don’t have to code it up from scratch, just amend the necessary stuff will do). Or, if you are adventurous, you can just start coding without one.

Main Index Template (index.php)

I suggest that you begin with Index.php because this is the file that ties all of the other WordPress files together. The first step is to call the header file. This is done by adding

<?php get_header(); ?>

The next essential piece of code you should add to the main index file is to tell WordPress how to behave if there are blog posts. This is accomplished by entering

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

You will then enter code on how way the page will be structured. This will vary according to how you want your page to look like. For instance, magazine-type look is going to be different than a blog-type one. After entering your code, you will have to add the following lines that will tell WordPress what will happen if there are no posts:

<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php else : ?>
<?php endif; ?>

After entering the behavior of the page, you need to call the sidebar and the footer. This is done by adding the following lines of code:

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

On the whole, it should look like this:

<?php get_header(); ?> <!--grab the header, part 1 of the layout-->
 
<?php if (have_posts()) : ?> <!--displaying the main content area,  part 2 of the layout-->
    <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
        Your HTML code here for displaying individual post.
    <?php endwhile; ?>
<?php else : ?>
        Your HTML code here when there is no post available
<?php endif; ?>
 
<?php get_sidebar(); ?> <!--display the sidebar, part 3 of the layout-->
<?php get_footer(); ?> <!--display the footer, part 4 of the layout-->

Stylesheet (style.css)

The cascading stylesheet includes all the formatting and styles for your WordPress theme. This will provide more flexibility to your theme instead of hardcoding them into each individual file. It is created just like any stylesheet. If you need a refresher, check out the W3 Consortium’s CSS style guide.

Header File (header.php)

The header file is like the beginning of an HTML file. Most of the time, you can just copy and paste from the default theme. The basic code that will be in the header file is as follows:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" <?php language_attributes(); ?>>
<head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="<?php bloginfo('html_type'); ?>; charset=<?php bloginfo('charset'); ?>" />
<title><?php wp_title('&laquo;', true, 'right'); ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_url'); ?>" type="text/css" media="screen" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?> RSS Feed" href="<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>" />
<link rel="pingback" href="<?php bloginfo('pingback_url'); ?>" />
<?php wp_head(); ?>
</head>
<body>

Sidebar (sidebar.php)

The sidebar is how you want the sidebar to look like. You can have more than one sidebar. However, we are creating a simple WordPress theme, so we will stick with one. People usually like placing widgets on the sidebar, so you should add code to ensure that your WordPress theme supports widgets. You can also have any standard sidebar items that you want without having to use a widget. Sidebar basic are as follows:

<div id="sidebar">
<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar() ) : ?>
<?php endif; ?>
</div>

The code above will check if the theme supports widget. If yes, it will load all the widget content onto the template. else, nothing will show up on the template.

To widgetize your theme, simply add the following code to your functions.php

<?php  if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
    register_sidebar(array(
        'before_widget' => '<li id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
        'after_widget' => '</li>',
        'before_title' => '<h2 class="widgettitle">',
        'after_title' => '</h2>',
    )); ?>

Footer (footer.php)

The footer file will close the WordPress theme. You can place anything you want in the footer. You will usually see the copyright information here. The basic code to create the footer file is:

<div id="footer" role="contentinfo">
        Place whatever footer information you want to place here
</div>
<?php wp_footer(); ?>
</body>
</html>

As I stated before, if you have never created a WordPress theme, but are knowledgeable in CSS and HTML, then check out the structure of existing and various other WordPress themes, and begin creating your own WordPress theme.

If you need help on customizing/creating your WordPress theme, feel free to contact us to ask for a quote.

Understanding WordPress Theme: The Basics of Creating Your Own WP Theme originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

What are pingbacks and trackbacks?

Pingbacks and trackbacks are very similar, but other than using different communication technologies (Pingbacks use XML-RPC; Trackbacks use HTTP POST), there are only minor differences. Pingbacks are a way of keeping track of other blogs who have linked to your blog posts within their own blog posts. In order to do this, external blogs have to use your blog post’s hyperlink. Trackbacks work the same, except the blog post’s hyperlink is not placed within an external blog post. They are usually placed in an area specified for trackbacks. Additionally, pingbacks automatically will find the URLs; while trackbacks are done manually.

What are comments?

Comments are responses to a particular blog post that readers have written. Usually, comments are located right after the blog post. People have the ability to reply to one another’s comments directly on the blog without having to go to an external site.

Separating Comments and Pingbacks

If you have noticed, the MakeTechEasier comment system has separated out the pingbacks and the comments for better readability.

So how did we do it?

WordPress Plugins

There are three WordPress plugins that you can use to separate comments from pingbacks/trackbacks:

1. BM-TrackPing

What this plugin does is to strip out the trackbacks from the comment list and then add a single new comment with all the trackbacks in a list at the end. This plugin has not been updated for more than a year, so there is no guarantee that it will work well for the latest version of WordPress.

2. Separate Comments & Pings

This plugin removes pings and trackbacks from comment pages and place them in a new variable $pings. You will have to do further coding to insert the pingbacks separately.

3. Trackping Separator

Remove your pingbacks from the comments and provided you functions (to use in your theme) to list pingbacks/trackbacks separately.

Manually Changing the Code

By far, this is the best (and most effective) way to separate pingbacks/trackbacks from comments. You might get your hands dirty, but I assure you it will be easy. Just follow the instructions below:

Note: The following instructions assume that you are using WP2.7 and above. It will not work for any WP version less than 2.7

In your WordPress theme folder, download the comments.php file from the server.

Open it with a text-editor

Find the following code:

<ol class="commentlist">
    <?php wp_list_comments(); ?>
</ol>

Change the code to be as follows:

<ol class="commentlist">
    <?php wp_list_comments('type=comment'); ?>
</ol>
<ol class="commentlist">
    <?php wp_list_comments('type=pings&callback=list_pings'); ?>
</ol>

What the above code does it to first display all the comments in an ordered list, followed by all the pingbacks/trackbacks in a second ordered list. You can play around with the code to style it up or to change the order of the display.

Once you are done editing, save it.

Rename the comments.php file in the server to comments-old.php and upload this newly edited comments.php to your server theme folder. Now go to your site and see the magic happens.

WordPress: How to Separate Pingbacks From Comments originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

There was a time when web pages had to be written specially for mobile devices and most devices available in the market just couldn’t display regular web sites designed using HTML.

The Safari browser on the iPhone and iPod touch devices is responsible for more than half of the world’s mobile Internet usage and it doesn’t look like that uptrend is going to change soon. The reason behind this popularity is that, unlike other smart phone browsers, mobile Safari can display regular webpages as well as desktop based web browsers.

But, while the iPhone and iPod touch browsers display almost all websites perfectly, using a mobile specific theme you can offer a lot of advantages to your visitors.

For one, the mobile optimized pages will load a lot faster. The fonts will be optimized for reading on a device with a small screen and last but not the least, the user won’t have to scroll and zoom just to read the content.

But, if you’re worried that you’ll have to do a complete rewrite of your blog’s theme to make a mobile optimized version, don’t worry, WPtouch is here to your rescue.

WPtouch is a wordpress plugin that completely changes the way your blog looks on a mobile device like the iPhone, iPod touch or the Android. In that sense, it acts more like a theme for your blog rather than a plugin.

If you’re using wordpress version 2.8 or above, the easiest method to install WPtouch is to login to the admin panel and click on the “Add New” link under Plugins.

Search for the term WPtouch and when the WPtouch plugin shows up in the search results, click on the Install link to install it automatically.

Once the installation is completed, you can activate the plugin by clicking on the Activate link on the same page.

The plugin will now be installed and activated, ready to start serving a mobile version of your blog to your iPhone totting visitors.

If you want, you can just leave it at that and WPtouch will happily keep serving your visitors as long as you want, but if you’re like me and like to customize each and every part of your blog, I’d suggest that you give the Settings pane a look and customize certain aspects of WPtouch to better match your blog.

Click on the WPtouch link under Settings.

This is where you can change the theme’s style, colors and the icons used. When you’re happy with your custom changes, click the Save Options button.

If you use the WP Super Cache plugin on your blog, like I do, then you need to make some more changes to the your setup.

Click on the WP Super Cache link under Settings and check the tick box that says “Mobile Device Support” and click the Update Status button.

Scroll a little further down the page and you’ll find the Rejected User Agents text box. You need to add the following user agents to the list that is already there.

• phone
• ipod
• android
• dream
• cupcake
• webos
• incognito
• webmate
• opera mini
• blackberry9530
• blackberry9500

Save the list.

That’s it. You can now happily declare your blog as the most mobile friendly blog in the neighborhood.

Make Your WordPress Blog iPhone Compatible Using WPtouch originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)