iPhone Mobile Web, Finally Usable
This post is slightly off-topic, but still a major concern for any serious blogger/webcomic/whatever WordPress admin. What do you do if you are out and about and you discover that your website has been hacked, or has malicious spam displaying, or whatever you don’t want there? If you are lucky (and rich) you might own a portable laptop that you can use to connect to your site using wifi or a cell network. But in most cases, you won’t have that. So what will you have? Maybe a phone.
Until recently I primarily used a combo of a Nokia N800 internet tablet connected by bluetooth to a Samsung Sync cellphone. This worked ok, but wasn’t very fast. It had other negatives also which would be worse for non-tech oriented people.
Then came the iPhone. It works pretty well on it’s own. However, as most people who have one have discovered, it doesn’t always work well with advanced javascript or other related programming. So it’s not easy sometimes to log into a WordPress admin area using the phone. There are some plugins out there for WordPress that make this better, but it still doesn’t replicate what you can do with other devices.
The biggest drawback of the iPhone was that it couldn’t tether to other devices to be used as a modem. It doesn’t have a dial-up networking or PAN bluetooth profile, and it didn’t have a wifi connection tool built in.
Until now. Yes, a new program out there called PDAnet for iPhone is available, and it turns your iPhone into a wifi router. So now any device that uses wifi (like a laptop or my n800) can connect to the iPhone and use it just like any other wifi hotspot. With a 3g iPhone this makes the connection pretty snappy–I’m actually using it right now with my Macbook pro to post this.
The best of all is this is free once you jailbreak your iPhone. So now I can use my iPhone for most tasks and set it to router mode when I need to use my n800 or laptop for more advanced needs. It’s a system I would strongly suggest to anyone searching for a convenient out and about system for internet use.
Slow Verus Fast Access For your Visitors
A recent article about site access speed posted over at Lorelle on WordPress started me thinking about my own path of site development over the last 7 years. The article talks about how up until recently most people were using dial up phone connections to reach the internet, and most sites needed to be optimized for this slow speed in order to be successful. This is true with sites I’ve developed, especially the first generation version of the Stupid and Insane Defenders Against Chaos webcomic site. The new version of the site is based now on WordPress and has many new features, but it’s also much larger and “slower” to load if you were to use a dial up connection. I think I subconsciously resisted moving to a new platform for a long time based on my thought that we’d be dropping support for slower connections, but as times change you do need to move on eventually. I’ve tried to keep the new site to a loading time that makes sense and isn’t really too bloated–I still find no need for unneeded flashy AJAX stuff or flash movie embeds, but I think most new site developers really have no desire to be restrained at all. And while cell phones and wireless systems are getting faster, mobile devices, and many libraries and school computer rooms will still feel like dial up in some ways when loading sites, a key thing many new developers forget about. It’s a balancing act and you need to think about your audience and what things are really needed for your site. I’d definitely suggest checking out Lorelle’s post to read more about the subject.
WordPress 2.6.2 out now, Security Update
WordPress 2.6.2 has been released and it’s a security update that everyone should apply who’s using 2.6. It’s not a major update so it shouldn’t break anything on your site.