Testing Two New WordPress Plugins...

Photics

Wow... so far I'm pleased with two new plugins that I installed at my website. One's a forum...

http://photics.com/forums

...and the other detects mobile browsers. If someone views my website with an iPhone or similar mobile device, the plugin converts my website to a more friendly layout. I was impressed at how well it worked... search, categories, comments... all the stuff was there, but optimized for mobile devices.

I've been improving my website because I'm expecting a surge in mobile traffic. With free versions of my apps on the way, and a new project that I'm planning, there should be a lot of clicks to my site. I realized that my website isn't optimized for mobile devices. That didn't really bother me before. But now that my site is primarily about mobile games and development, it seemed like a site upgrade was necessary.

I really like the forums. It's integrated with WordPress. I think it's better than bbPress, which is what GameSalad uses. The plugin is called Mingle Forums. It uses the same database, but it also fits inside the theme. That works great with the mobile version of my website. Maybe that's better technology for GameSalad. Although, switching from bbPress to Mingle Forum might be tedious. I have some posts from an older forum. Importing it doesn't seem like a trivial task.

Anyway... if you have a website that runs WordPress, this might be something to look into. With two quick plugin installs, I dramatically expanded the capability of my website.

xarmian

Thanks for the suggestion of the forum plugin. I was going to start looking for one soon and that looks really nice. I'm guessing the mobile version plugin you're referring to is wptouch? I installed that the other day and it's excellent. Talk about making things simple and elegant.

Photics

xarmian said:
Thanks for the suggestion of the forum plugin. I was going to start looking for one soon and that looks really nice. I'm guessing the mobile version plugin you're referring to is wptouch? I installed that the other day and it's excellent. Talk about making things simple and elegant.

Yeah, the other plugin is WPtouch. It's great. I looked around at other WordPress forum software... Mingle Forum is my favorite so far.

xyloFUN

Hey Photics,
i've used a handful of forum plugins over the years and the one you use is the better one out there (has many add-ons).
Symposium will be a good one too once the bugs are squashed ... they are on the right way.

Hey, while i have your attention, are you selling a pdf version of your book these days or only the reader version?

Photics

Symposium looks like a nice start, but not ready yet. Heh... the WordPress listing made me laugh...

although we have not found any problems, we do not recommend you use it on any production sites.

As for the book... I might be making it App only. I'm waiting to see if Apple approves it. I think I've done a really nice job with the App. It's a universal binary that I think works faster than iBooks.

The older version of the book, as a PDF, is usually available to customers upon request. It's still in the download area, I only need to email the link. It works with the same login information as the epub.

I posted more about my plans in another thread...
http://gamesalad.com/forums/topic.php?id=14303

Basically... a Google Checkout button isn't good enough. It's frustrating to email customers the download information, but have it blocked by a spam filter. I looked at e-commerce systems, but I wasn't happy with what I found. I'm moving the project over to iTunes. I think that's where it makes the most sense.