WordPress have announced the release of the WordPress for Android App.

According to WordPress…

The initial release has focused on giving you the ability to manage your blog while on the go.

Features include the ability to:

• Configure and manage multiple blogs
• Comment moderation including the ability to reply to comments
• Create and Edit Posts including categories, tags and photos
• Create and Edit Pages
• Get notified of new comments in the Android notification bar

I was using wpToGo, which had a more restricted set of abilities, but this taken over by WordPress and modified to this new plugin. I replaced it last night and, indeed, it is a much better and powerful tool, allowing me to view my posts and create new ones (amongst many other things) in a very easy fashion.

If you administer a WordPress blog, this is highly recommended.

I missed this at the time – I also got a mention (and more links) on the BBC Internet Blog weekly round-up.

…blogger David Artiss was pleasantly surprised that he had some BBC bods commenting on his Wii post and more so that we’d linked to him from the blog

If you haven’t spotted already, I’m tinkering (again) with the blog layout.

In particular, I’m working on the design at the bottom of each post. This is also extending to the pages with, and for the first time, the ability to leave comments on them. And after writing a new plugin (coming soon!) for which I’ve learnt all about using custom fields, I’m using them to suppress adverts and comments on specific pages.

Oh, and I’ve done something (reasonably) clever with one my plugins. YARPP (Yet Another Related Posts Plugin) is good but the fixed number of recommendations per post was causing me problems – lots of related posts for a short entry was looking like overkill but, at the same time, large posts were looking a little, erm, lacking. However, the number can be overridden so I’ve updated the plugin call to vary this depending on the blog size. It’s not 100% accurate but, hey, it’s better than it was before.

Here’s the script…

$post_len=strlen($post->post_content);
if ($post_len<1000) {
    related_posts(array('limit'=>2));
} else {
    $max_posts=floor(($post_len+2000)/3000)+2;
    related_posts(array('limit'=>$max_posts));
}

As you can see, it’s quite simple. If the number of characters in the post if less than 1000 then it default to a maximum of 2 related posts. It then goes up by 1 at 1000 characters and then again every 3000 characters.

Now I won’t mention which blog I found this on, but doesn’t this look a little, erm, odd…

Surely he’s not advertising for friends? Is he?

Well, my blog has. Yes, I’ve added an extra column to it.

I thought the information down the left hand side was getting a little long. The further down the screen it goes, the less chance of it being read. So I’ve split it into 2 and divided it onto both sides of the page. The left hand side is for information about me. The right hand side is for information about the blog.

And it’s still XHTML compliant.

But in doing so I found a problem with my Simple Wakoopa List plugin – when displaying “newly used” software the links don’t work properly. After having a bit of a fumble about, it would appear the problem is the feed from Wakoopa rather than my plugin – it doesn’t appear the supply them in certain circumstances. A quick fix would be to not display a link if one is not forthcoming from the XML feed. However, just after I wrote the plugin, Wakoopa launched a new API – my plan, therefore, is to move to this. The one downside, though, is that I can’t find an equivalent of “newly used” with the new system. So I’ve contacted Wakoopa. As soon as I get a response I’ll code a fix.