[tweetmeme] The world’s most popular blogging platform finally gets a usable iPhone app in the store. The first version of the WordPress app from Automattic, Inc. was a total disappointment with its limited functionality. To make matters worse, the iPhone didn’t have copy paste. iPhone 3.0 software did improve things on the API end, and the version 1.3 did add more functionality like comment-moderation, but things were still unusable. With WordPress 2.0, Automattic has created a much more complete app, although it still has its shortcomings. Let’s take a look.

Automattic has realised that writing long posts isn’t one of the iPhone’s strong points, so they’ve given more importance to comment moderation. The first tab lists out your comments from your self hosted or wordpress.com blog, from where you can review pending comments, delete existing ones, and mass edit a bunch of them. You can’t however edit the comment itself. There’s also this annoying UI flaw, that if you tap the “Edit” button while the list is refreshing, you get a “Can’t edit while list is refreshing” alert. Didn’t anyone tell them you can disable the edit button while the list is refreshing? It’s a minor gripe, but I had to bring it up.

Going over to the posts, the app lists out 10 posts from your blog. You can increase the number in the settings, but unfortunately you can’t ‘load more’ on whim. Finally, the posts include drafts and pending reviews. It was the most idiotic feature-deficit in the previous app, and I’m glad it’s finally fixed. However, it mixes up drafts, pending reviews, and published posts in a single list with no way to differentiate other than your own memory of whether or not it’s published. You can of course tap into a post to check the status.

That brings us to the compose view. It’s a no-frills editor, with support for tags, categories, and the content itself. The tabs at the bottom allow you to add photos from your library, and even preview the page. However the preview only works for ‘default’ themes, so for the rest of the custom themes it will render it with its own CSS. No complaints. There’s a lot more that could be done with the composer however. For once, the picture attachments are added at the end of the post when published, so there’s no real way to copy paste it in between your post [1. You can publish the post, and then edit it, thereby accessing the code]. Second, there’s no TextExpander support, which would have greatly improved the blogging experience.

The last tab allows you to edit Pages, not sure how many will need that. There’s also other improvements like sort-of persistence, which brings you back to the blog you were last working on instead of the start screen. It also makes sure you don’t lose posts because of a dropped connection. Overall, version 2 makes the app much more usable [2. A lot of App Store reviews say the app is crashy and buggy, but it was a smooth ride for me. Your mileage may vary.] for moderating comments and editing posts while lying on the couch. But while the iPhone is certainly capable of providing the foundation, the WordPress 2 app still lacks much for serious publishing. Oh, and it’s a whole new app, so you can’t just ‘update’ version 1.3. It is of course, still free and open source. Go download.