How to Manage a Blog From Your iPhone

Many of us run a blog in some form or another. Whether it’s related to the industry in which you work, keeping track of interesting snippets you find online, or simply a showcase of funny giraffe pictures, the primary method for updating your blog is usually through a web interface. Various desktop blogging applications are available, but your iPhone is also a capable tool for posting updates and links, moderating comments, and keeping track of statistics.

Today we’ll be covering various different iPhone apps and techniques that can help you become a truly mobile blogger!

The extent to which you can manage your blog from an iPhone depends largely upon the platform you use – WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Posterous, TypePad and so on. This how-to will cover what’s possible for each of these different platforms.

WordPress

Obviously the main blogging system to tackle first is WordPress. Available both for your own server, and online via WordPress.com, this is by far the largest and most popular platform. Unsurprisingly, they also have an excellent iPhone app.

WordPress 2 is the latest release of the app, providing a fairly comprehensive range of features for taking care of your WordPress blog.

WordPress

Tumblr

If you’re more of a Tumblr fan, you’re also covered by an application developed the blog platform itself. The Tumblr app has gone through several iterations, and improved a great deal in the latest release.

You can easily post a new text article, quote, chat, link or photo, along with checking your Dashboard, and also uploading a video if using a 3GS. Fairly impressive!

Tumblr

Posterous

If you’re a Posterous user, unfortunately an iPhone app hasn’t been developed that works quite as well as the Tumblr software. The process to follow centres instead around email. Once you’ve set your account up, it’s just a case of emailing post@posterous.com with whatever you’d like to upload – something that can be done easily from the iPhone.

There is an app available – PicPosterous – that makes uploading photos or video to your blog a simple process. It’s really easy to use, and supports the use of albums, geotagging, and pause/resume of video upload when you quit and re-open the app.

Posterous

TypePad

TypePad does have it’s own iPhone app that allows you to publish new content to your blog. Unfortunately, that’s more or less where it ends. There’s no support for drafts, accessing your existing posts, or any other advanced features. If you’re happy to settle for a simple mobile posting solution, it’s great – but don’t expect to be blown away.

TypePad

Multi-Platform Apps

Another category of iPhone apps exist, capable of handling various different blogging platforms. These are the best way to update multiple blogs at a time, or interact with services such as MSN Live Spaces, Blogger, and LiveJournal. A selection of these worth taking a look at are:

• BlogPress – Supports a wide range of blog platforms, video upload, and the uploading of multiple photos. Very impressive!
• iBlogger – Another well-rounded app, which aims to auto-configure many of your blog settings when used for the first time.
• ShoZu – Not quite as reliable as the above two apps, but it does support a range of services including Twitter and Facebook.

Statistics and Analytics

From time-to-time, you may find yourself wanting to check up on the size of your readership – RSS subscribers, visitor stats, or Twitter followers. Various apps are available to achieve this, but here are a handful that I’d recommend:

• Ego – For tracking all of the above, in a simple and attractive interface. Really beautiful and easy-to-use. Great if you’re a fan of Mint.
• Analytics App – The best application for checking up on Google Analytics statistics for multiple sites. Capable of some really advanced analysis of data for a mobile device.
• Birdbrain – An interesting app for staying on top of Twitter statistics. Don’t get too addicted though…

Conclusion

Although Safari is more than capable of running any blog interface, you don’t need to feel limited to that one option. A wide range of dedicated blogging apps are available – whether you’re running a widespread platform such as WordPress, or something more specialist.