WPCandy iPhone App Review – Must-Have for WordPress Lovers
Ever since WPCandy was brought back to life around four months ago it has been, easily, one of the best places to find constantly updated WordPress news.
For a while I used it almost solely to keep track of all the happenings in the community, not having time to dig through all the noise on Twitter on a daily basis.
Being an iPhone owner, I was especially excited to hear that they released an app for it. I recently had the chance to try it out and my findings are below.
Buying the App
The app currently costs $0.99 in the App Store. Just search for “wpcandy” and it’ll pop up.
The Home Screen
By default, the WPCandy app shows the latest posts on the home screen.
It utilizes scrolling to navigate through all of the latest posts, which are separated by day.
At the top right, there is a refresh button which checks if there are any new posts available (which is also visible on every other tabbed page except “More”).
On the bottom are tabs to navigate between other categories from the WPCandy website. By default, they are:
- Popular
- Interviews
- Reviews
- More
If you aren’t happy with these, not to worry, they can be customized later (which I’ll get to later in the review).
Normal Single Post
The single post is about what you would expect. The top menu changes around a bit with:
- A button to return to the previous category screen
- A button to open in Safari or share via email
- Buttons for previous/next post navigation
…in that order.
The bottom menu is also removed in favor of more space for content.
There are no comments displayed, although if you really want to see the comments on a specific post, you can always use the “Open in Safari” feature to read them.
Interview Posts
As of now, all of the posts included on the “Interviews” tab are videos.
When selecting an interview, you will be taken to an alternate version of a single post view which is basically a link to the corresponding YouTube video.
After tapping the video thumbnail, you’ll automatically be taken to the YouTube app which then plays the video.
After you’re done with the video, you can leave the YouTube app and end up right back where you started in the WPCandy app.
Configuring the Tabs
As I mentioned above, you can also configure the featured tabs that are displayed at the bottom of category pages. Besides the default ones, you also have the following available on the “More” tab:
- News
- Tutorials
- Editorials
- Features
To configure them, select the “Edit” button on the top right of the “More” page.
Simply drag the corresponding icon to the tab area below you want replaced. In the picture I’m dragging the “Tutorials” icon.
Some Limitations
The biggest limitation seems to be not being able to dig past 25 posts in any given category. There is also not a search feature as far as I can tell, so if you’re looking up an older post or want to search for specific keywords and such, that option is not available at the moment.
According to the most recent post about the WPCandy app, Ryan says that, “We have a few enhancements coming to the iPhone app very soon.” So maybe these search features are already in the pipeline.
Conclusion
Currently priced at $0.99, this app is definitely a great deal to stay up-to-date with all the news in the WordPress community. Yes, I know you can get all the same information just by visiting their website in Safari, but the app does make it a lot easier and more convenient to browse.
Also if you don’t have an iPhone, you can also build a WPCandy news feed directly into your WordPress dashboard with this plugin.
Related posts:
- Chocolate WordPress Theme Review
- Thematic WordPress Theme Review
- WordPress Weekend Resources – May 30, 2008
Posted in Theme Labs
