Mom's Gadgets

In a previous post, I talked about blogging from mobile devices and Pamela asked if I could write up step-by-step how blog from your PDA or smart phone. And so I will. There are several ways to do this but I’m going to outline the method that’s simplest to get going without any technical know how.

Step One

Download the WordPress Mobile plugin from the developer’s site.

Step Two

Upload it to your web site. Here’s one way. If your web host doesn’t look anything like this, get help from your web host how to upload files. Log in to your web hosting dashboard. Look for something called File Manager or similar.

When you click on file manager, you will get a listing of all the files on your web site. Find the public_html folder and click on the folder icon to open the folder.


You’ll get yet another list of files inside your web site. This is the harder part. You need to find the wp-content folder. If your blog has a URL like site.com then you should see a folder named wp-content here. If your blog URL is site.com/blog or site.com/somefoldername then you need to find the ‘blog’ or whatever the folder name is and click on the folder icon to open it. You will then see the wp-content folder.


Once you have that folder open, look for the plugins folder and click on the folder icon to open it again. Yes I know this is buried pretty deep but it’s not as hard as it looks like here.


So here’s a quick nutshell. You want to navigate your way into the plugins folder which is usually found inside wp-content >> plugins.

Once you’re in the plugins folder, click on Upload file(s)

You’ll see a page that looks like this.

Click Browse… and find the zip file you downloaded from WordPress Mobile. Click Upload and you’ll be directed back to the plugins folder. Find the WordPress Mobile plugin file and click on the link. Look over to the top right corner of your screen you should see this.

That’s right click on Extract File Contents to unzip the file into your plugins folder. You should see a file named wordpress-mobile.php if successful. Now you can quit and log out of your web host.

Step Three
Activate plugin. Login to your blog like you normally do. Once in, click on Plugins.

Find WordPress Mobile, then click Activate and you’re done!

Step Four
Now, all that is left to do is to configure the plugin. Go to Options >> WordPress Mobile. If you do not understand all the options, you may want to re-visit the plugin developer site for an explanation. There is only one important thing you want to set. Look for the section where it says Posting to WordPress from a phone. Enter a password there. You will need this password when you are posting from your phone. Select the category the post will be filed under when you post from your phone.

Now you are all set up and ready to blog from your phone. Try visiting your website from your phone or PDA. You will see the site now looks different and there is a link at the bottom of the screen that says Create Post.

Click that and you can start writing. Don’t forget to enter your password.

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