Mobile Blogging with MyWapBlog

MyWapBlog - Sample PostMyWapBlog is a new, easy to use  mobile blogging platform. After a simple registration process requiring only a name, password and verifiable email address you are ready to start blogging.

MyWapBlog gives you an easy to remember and type mobile subdomain URL.  Mine is wapreview.mywapblog.com.  Users can leave comments on any post.  There is no comment moderation system, comments are published as soon as they are posted. This could be a problem if blog SPAMers discover MyWapBlog. Comments can at least be edited or deleted after they have been published.

There are also no RSS feeds available, something I consider essential in a blogging platform.   The lack of feeds is a bit of a show stopper for me as I depend on Bloglines Mobile to keep up with what’s going on in the blogosphere.

MyWapBlog lets you upload images directly from your phone to your blog using a “browse for file” based image manager. Uploaded images can be inserted anywhere in posts. Unfortunately, not all phones support direct uploading and there is no option to upload by email or MMS. If your phone can’t upload images, a work around is to use Opera Mini 4.1, which can do uploads on many (but not all phones). It is also possible to upload images from a PC. MyWapBlog is a pure mobile play, there is no full-web version, but the mobile site works fine with desktop browsers. Images are re-sized when uploaded. You choose Small, Medium or Large when uploading, which correspond to maximum image widths of 115 px,  169px and 235px. Both GIF and JPEG images are supported. Transparent GIFs lose their transparency when uploaded, however.

MyWapBlog - SettingsMyWapBlog it quite configurable. Using the Dashboard, you can change your blog’s title, number of posts per page and whether the home page displays full posts, excerpts (“teasers”) or titles only, which MyWapBlog calls “Optimized”. Teasers and titles link to the full post on a page of its own. If you tend write long posts (over 250 words) or use images, you should probably choose “Teasers” or “Optimized” to avoid exceeding the 10 KB page size limit of many low end phones.

There are several themes available to customize your blog’s appearance. The first screenshot shows the “Dark” theme. The themes do not display in all browsers as they depend on a stylesheet sent as media="handheld". Many mobile browsers will use handheld stylesheets but some, including S60WebKit, Netfront and Opera Mini in “desktop mode”, do not. It’s not the end of the world if a mobile doesn’t use the stylesheet, the blog will just render using black text on a white background instead of the theme colors.

In its initial release MyWapBlog is already a very capable pure mobile blogging platform. MyWapBlog seems stable and fast. Themes and ability to insert images anywhere in a post make it possible to create an attractive mobile blog with very little effort. MyWapBlog is up against some well established players in this domain, including Vox and Live Spaces. A few enhancements (RSS, comment moderation email and/or MMS image uploading) could make MyWapBlog  very competitive.

Mobile Link: mywapblog.com

Ratings: Content: ***__ Usability: XXXX_

Filed in: Mobile Site Directory – RSS – Blogging

8 thoughts on “Mobile Blogging with MyWapBlog

  1. you don’t need to create/paste sitemap

    you can any time submit your Blog sitemap to Search Engine that is here YOUR_BLOG_URL/sitemap.xml
    or you can say /sitemap.xml

  2. nice post,i am also mywapblog user,and i like it features,but something have been baffling me since,and it is “where can i paste my sitemap.xml in mywapblog?”

  3. I think this review is published in 2008. Now it’s 2011. Mywapblog changed a lot. I think it’s the best platform for mobile blogging. New custom domain option is also available. Just create one and test it yourself… That’s all

  4. Thank you very much Dennis for the review.

    We are constantly working on improving the service and will try to implement the missing features as soon as possible.

    Thank you.

  5. Besides the points that you mentioned earlier,I miss a functionality to edit the style of the blog.As a mobile web designer,I am very much tempted to do so.There are a lots of presentational glitches on styles provided by MyWapBlog.Then they don’t allow to upload a logo for the blog.Only text heading can be used.

    The launch of MyWapBlog narrowly coincided with that on Peperonity.com .Peperonity also lacks XML feeds and comment moderation.It does not allow more than one image per post.It has got no accesskeys.But Peperonity has a great exposure system which works and it stands on its name.MyWapBlog is a new player.Peperonity has promised to remove some of the limitations in its upcoming redesign in November.This makes the position of new players more critical.

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