Itunes app store has finnally got one if the most important blog applications available for download: Wordpress. It is everything I expected and more. This is very cool addition to the iphone apps as we have more and more mobile bloggers emerging.

The application was released last night on the app store and I have just pulled it down on my iPhone and tested, the begining of this post was done completely on the iPhone.  I came back in and added the image.  In testing it allows you to add tags separated by commas, choose multiple categories or create new ones and allows you to create a local draft that stays only on the iphone or save as a draft to your blog.

From the Wordpress site:

Introducing the first Open Source app that lets you write posts, upload photos, and edit your WordPress blog from your iPhone or iPod Touch. With support for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (2.5.1 or higher), users of all experience levels can get going in seconds.

Very cool.

This is a two-for-wednesday.  It would have been Tuesday but yeah… coding problems.

Number one:  As you can see wetwired has the new look that we promised.  I’ve been working on coding this for a while and given that I hate coding for wordpress, I think its turned out reasonably well.  There are slight issues with the sidebar and different browsers.  I’ll be continually working on it to try to address the issues that crop up.   Incedently if anyone is good with wordpres and divs and this stupid widgetized sidebar and can figure out why the twitter stuff loads 5 different ways from sunday on every browser, please let me know.

Number two: Wordpress 2.6 has been released.  This means new features for us, and maybe for you.  I tested slightly on our sandbox to verify all hell didn’t break loose and I’ve now updated wetwired to this latest version.  Let me know if you see something broken I might fix it, or I might laugh in your face.

Many of you know that what is up on this site now is a temporary holding pattern for a fresh design.  Our artist has finnally finished up the new logo.  So without further ado:

You may or may not notice, but wetwired has been running extremly slow this morning and it was running slow last night.  At times it takes over 1 minute to load the page.  I have done some extensive troubleshooting with firefox, and firebug plugin and after turning off all plugins - defaulting back to the generic theme of wordpress all signs point to DB queries being the problem - meaning my host (godaddy) is having DB issues or performance issues.  Posting a static page works just fine and displays correctly.  I also noticed that they just updated php on the godaddy servers - who knows this could also be a factor.

I did some searching to see if there were wordpress performance posts or insight and there was - but I’ve covered the basis for reasons why it would be slow as notated above.  I can only wait until my host gets back to me.  Incidentally, when you call them you get a phone person who is nice but is not technical.  They then tell you they will escalate the issue and you’ll get an email back in a couple hours.  It’s been a couple hours.. no word.  We’ll see how good their support is.

Just updated to Wordpress 2.5.1 which contains 70 or so fixes and some security bugs etc.  Additionally they add a hash to the cookies which is specific to the site that makes it harder to hack.  Anyway, you guys won’t notice much, that changes are mostly all back end.

Things may be up and down as we are updating to the latest version of wordpress. I must say I’m impressed with it and all the new features.

Update: I’ve grabbed a new theme since I have been having so many problems with K2.

I’m now using futurosity which I’ve managed to modify somewhat to suit my needs. I think it will at least do until I am able to do my own custom programing for wordpress and wetwired.

Update #2 I’ve used the hack suggested for the RC4 version of K2 and re-uploaded it and the refresh problem with the site seems to be resolved.  This layout is more conducive to what we want wetwired to look like in the long run.  3-31-08 

Wetwired has yet another upgrade, this time with Mint. I’ve been watching this website for quite some time and have seen the first couple iterations and with the latest version and wetwired’s hosting change, blogging software change, it was time to get some cool stat whoring number program…especially since I’m saving an insane amount of money on hosting now.Above is a screenshot of what it looks like, it is of course sparse with no real information but give it a couple days and I’ll be collecting all of your browsing data and using it to take over the world. Insert evil laugh here. 

Click below and vote for RedSaid. She’s a pain but we love her… might as well show the link love as I know she’d return the favor once wetwired is back in the running for the 2008 weblog awards over here in the states. So vote for this hot South African Vixen, who is always on the lookout for someone with a green card. Just kidding…

“So, yeah, we had a good thing going for a long time there. But Movable Type, baby, we felt that love start to die inside and we couldn’t go on just for the posts.

 Oh, don’t cry baby. It’s us, it’s not you. You’re beautiful, yes you are!

So yeah, we’re moving into this cramped little studio apartment until we get our new place. It’s not like it was with you, but it’s okay. We’ll be okay.”

So yeah, you’re looking at our temp placeholding until we get the new site full launched.It’s not as nice as the old site, but it’ll do until we get everything up and running.

Oh, and I may have some news about The Job soon, so stay tuned.

Out.

I’ve grabbed the K2 theme and threw up an older custom drawn header I had made some 2 years ago but never posted.  If you’ve followed any of the wetwired news posts about the site itself you’ll remember that several times I have begun to re-design the site and have not moved forward with it.  This time I have a new theme that I’ve got an artist working on and once its done I’ll be working hard on creating the wetwired theme for the site and then uploading it.

So needless to say here is the site in all its temporary template glory, but fully converted to wordpress including all the old posts and comments no less.  The forums will not be going back up, feel free to comment and notice that the comments actually work again!

Would you believe that we’ve switched from movable type to wordpress?  Yeah who’d of thunk it?  Please bare with us as we work through all the design bugs and changes.  Good news is all the old posts, comments, and tags came over.

Six Apart Has released the full version of 3.3, and once again opened up the restrictions they had on authors and bloggers. They now offer an Enterprise edition of the software, call me jaded but I paid a chunk of change even as a “non-profit” and never really made use of the support.

So who has made the move to 3.3 yet? Anyone have any problems? I’m thinking about making the move this weekend.

I’ve entered into a “contract”, or rather an agreement with a new Artist to design color graphics (drawn) for wetwired, and possibly future work for Magnified Designs. So needless to say some point this fall, wetwired will be re-launched with a new design. But don’t worry the old design will still be around, you’ll be able to choose between to two.. At least I’m hoping so.

Anyway in the mean time, I’m looking for something interesting to redesign, so if your interested comment and leave me your current site and what you’re looking for and maybe if I’m inspired, I’ll hook you up.

Hopefully Thursday we’ll know who the finalists are for this thing. Remeber to go and vote for wetwired for Best Blog Design, and vote for the other categories as well! There are some new ones out there since I first posted about best designs but wetwired can hold its own, we have a very capable artist, and an awsome designer.. me.. hehe.

http://weblogawards.org/ hosted by wizbang.
Ok so we’re up for best blog design here:
Best Blog Design

So what I’ve done is gone through and looked at all the current sites that are designed well. Of course we think we have the best because well, its had many many redesigns and we have an artist that is the best.

1. Wetwired #1 yeah! But look, Using Movable type, Clean looking with great cartoons, and post icons that match. You can tell a lot of time and effort goes into wetwired.

2. Dizzy Girl always has multiple designs ranging from really cool to kinda blah.. right now the current skin she is using doesn’t stand out. I do hand it to her, she puts some serious effort into her friday posts!

3. The shape of days I have to hand it to them, they got a professional designer like moi, to design it. Its very good, the CSS layout is the way to go. I view this is real competition. - Update the professional designer/coder/”they” is just Jeff the owner of the blog. - Thanks Jeff for clarifying.

4. My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Also not done by the author of the blog, professionally designed.. mostly. But listen, if its a right wing conspiracy, why are all the graphics on the left?!

5. Sharp as a Marble Using a notbook style layout, which has been done before, but it still looks like they put in effort. What would have been cooler is that if the posts would have been on the lines of the notebook instead of a white box on top of it.

6. Gentlemen Prefer Blogs Decent graphics, the professionally designed look - and in fact it is, nice little graphics for the posts too.

7. Lord Boom Boom These guys are bringing up the rear, the image is kinda cool, but nothing really stands out as being clean and consise. I guess the color scheme just bugs me.

8. Just a girl in the world Its clean, all the graphics mesh together.

9. Scrubbles They are so so, its better than some of the others on blogger still.

10. LJC FYI Themed for fall colors, interesting little cartoons, kinda similar to wetwired, not bad.

So there you have it, the ones that currently stand out against the crowd, the rest are using default templates of blogger or movable type, or really haven’t put any effort into designing. Or maybe you have, but it doesn’t show. Having a good design on your blog takes a lot of though out work and some artistic talent, form follows function.