December 22nd, 2009

My name is Doug Stewart and I, together with Stephane Daury and Viper007Bond, entered and won the “mobile admin interface contest” Matt Mullenweg sponsored on the wp-hackers mailing list back at the end of 2007. Our plugin, WPhone:

…creates an option while logging in to replace the default admin interface with one designed for your phone (see screenshots).

It contains two versions of the mobile admin interface:

Rich: designed for the iPhone / iPod Touch and other phones supporting full Javascript and CSS featuring fancy AJAX and sliding menus

Lite: a lightweight, simple version designed for all other phone types (no Javascript or anything else required)

WPhone was readily picked up by the mobile computing WordPressers of the world and saw a great deal of use in its first months. Then Automattic announced the release of their iPhone/iPod Touch app and we figured that WPhone’s days were numbered. However, folks have continued to use it, particularly on Blackberries, Nokia N-series handsets and yes, even Windows Mobile devices. This is great, with two caveats:

WPhone doesn’t fully work with versions of WordPress newer than 2.5
Stephane, Viper and I no longer have time to bring it up to snuff

So, to put it bluntly, we need your help in bringing a compelling mobile admin experience back to all mobile users, be they Droid, Pre, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, or yes, even iPhone users that don’t want yet another app clogging up their home screens.

If you’re interested, please visit this post over on the WPhone site for further details or send an email to batsignal@wphoneplugin.org.

Many, many thanks in advance and a big thanks goes out to Mark and the rest of the WTC crew for allowing me to post my plea here.