Here is a big hint: you already have it.

The official WordPress app is a disaster. The comments on the app will tell you that, as will anyone who has ever had the misfortune of using it. Even the esteemed Andy Ihnatko has nothing but harsh words for it. This mess of an app has lost more than one draft for me, and offers no real formatting options. It’s terrible at posting pictures, even worse at plain ol’ text, and generally a waste of time, space, bits, and money (it’s free, still too much). Other apps have equally poor reviews, and after my experience with the WordPress app for iPad, I had no desire to test them.

I ran a quick google search to see if the standard standard web interface for posting to a wordpress blog would work using Mobile Safari on my iPad. According to everything I read, it wouldn’t. Frustrated with the lack of a quality app, I thought I would try it for myself. The result: everyone else is wrong. You don’t need an app. The standard web interface to wordpress works just fine!

I wrote this post entirely on my iPad, including taking and uploading the screenshots.

Here are a few tips to make your experience better:

On the iPad, you can scroll inside a text box by dragging with two fingers. This is not new information to most people i suppose, but it was news to me. This is important, since you will be typing your post inside a text box on the website.

The buttons on top of the text box work as expected. To make text bold or insert a link, just tap and hold to select the text, then tap the desired button.

Uploading images is the hardest part of using the web interface. Since the iPad has no user-accessible file system, you cannot tap the image button and expect to upload a picture. You can, however, use that same button to select any image that has already been uploaded to your blog, and insert it into your post. I used the previously mentioned crappy WordPress app to make a draft post, and attached the images I wanted to that draft. The pictures got uploaded to my site, and I was then able to go back to Safari and select them from the “Media Gallery” and insert them.

The website I tested on is powered by wordpress software running on it’s own server. I have not been able to test the interface on a wordpress.com hosted site, but I assume that interface is the same. YMMV.

Happy Blogging!