Take a moment and digest these numbers. WordPress powers 14.7% of the top million websites (TechCrunch), or somewhere in the neighborhood of 64 million sites. WordPress sites get 308 million visitors each month who view more than 2.5 billion WordPress pages (WordPress). And for the icing, there are 5.3 billion mobile subscribers worldwide (mobithinking.com).
If your site is powered by WordPress then you need to get WPtouch Pro by Brave New Code; a plugin that will transform any WordPress blog into a mobile site for visitors using any of a number of mobile devices. Here’s why…
As Advertised
WPtouch Pro adds powerful, easy-to-use features to WordPress for mobile + tablet theme support. It’s also a powerful theming framework, perfect for creating mobile and tablet optimized versions of websites. It works by detecting supported devices like iPhones, iPads, Android, and Blackberry, and serving its optimized theme instead of your regular desktop theme. There’s even an option to switch back to the desktop theme if so desired.
The plugin doesn’t glue together RSS feeds, or use a proxy server to modify a site’s look—it creates a full-fledged theme,completely separate from the desktop theme that offers most of WordPress’ native features, and works with other plugins, too.
WPtouch Pro includes 200+ great new features over the free version with powerful options in an easy-to-use admin. It also includes top-notch customer support and free upgrades through all 2.x version releases. If you have the time check out BraveNewCode’s flickr account loaded with demo images.
My Take
When I researched ways to make my site mobile I ran across all kinds of plugins including Mobify, WordPress Mobile Pack, and WPtouch. Eventually I settled on the WPtouch basic plugin. After a few months I began wanting some of the Pro-only features (like custom ad support, multi-level nav menus, and iPad support) and eventually bought a single site license to the Pro version (the first WP tool I ever purchased). I was not disappointed. Installation was a snap. My site was mobile within 10 minutes. No design or programming skills required.
What I like:
- Statistics and Ad integration. Copy/paste stats (Google, Mint, etc) and ad (Adsense, Admob, custom) code into the admin panel and forget about ‘em both.
- Web-App Mode. My readers can add my blog to their home screen and access it free of all the Safari bloat via an icon of my choosing.
- Media formatting. Regardless of my media’s dimensions WPtouch Pro will resize ‘em to fit the viewing device.
- Custom links. Since WPtouch Pro supports WP 3.0 custom menus I can use an existing menu or create one to use specifically with WPtouch Pro.
- Styling. Armed with nothing more than basic CSS knowledge I am able to customize the entire look and feel of my mobile site. From backgrounds to font color and size to icons and images. Even better I’ve got a customized stylesheet to control all of these stylings.
- iPad theme. Hell to the yeah!
- WordTwit Pro integration. I
What I would like:
- Ad integration for the iPad theme.
- A cup of coffee, black.
Pricing
WPtouch basic is free and can be downloaded from WordPress.org. If you want WPtouch Pro you’ll need to pay up. As of this writing there are three pricing options: $39 for a single website, $69 for a 5-pack, and $199 for unlimited sites. And, if you want WordTwit Proyou’ll need to fork over $39 for a single site, $69 for the 5-pack, and $99 for the Pro Unlimited license. BTW, if you buy either of these plugins and decide you don’t like ‘em you can get fully refunded up to 7 days.
Final Thoughts
As of 8/11/11, WPtouch (free) and WPtouch Pro (paid) run on 25 million (39%) WordPress websites worldwide, encompassing both self-hosted WordPress.org websites and WordPress.com hosted websites. Question is, will yours be one of ‘em?
Feel free to share your thoughts below or send me an e-mail at TiTy@y2kemo.com. BTW, if you like shoddy reviews and solid rebuttals check out Jakob Nielsen’s review and Dale Mugford’s response.
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