We’re happy to announce that you can now get comment push notifications on your Windows Phone (OS 7.5+) which enables you to moderate comments from wherever you happen to be at the time. With 2.1 you also get a rich text editor, making it much easier to write longer posts having to deal with any HTML code.

Read on to learn what’s new or update/download version 2.1 from the Windows Phone Store right now by clicking below.

Download AppWordPress for Windows PhoneSupported: WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress (v. 2.9+)

Rich Text Editor

Now you finally have the ability to use a rich text editor when creating or editing a post or page. The new editor has easy to access styling options beneath the keyboard and in the app menu, these include bulleted/numbered lists, bold, underline, and italic text. You’ll also find a handy link helper among the text editing tools.

Comment Push Notifications

If you have a WordPress.com blog (or a self-hosted blog with the Jetpack plugin) added to the app, you can now opt in to receive push notifications for new comments. This makes it easier than ever to keep up with your readers and moderate comments while on the go. You’ll get push notifications for new comments only and viewing a notification takes you right to the comment within the app. From there you can easily respond and moderate like usual.

Stability Improvements

In addition to the new features, we’ve worked hard on making the app even more stable. In total, almost 40 bugs and crashes have been fixed in this release.

Screenshots

Contributors

The following contributors have worked on this release of WordPress for Windows Phone:  aerych, isaackeyet, and daniloercoli.

Get Involved!

We now have a feature-driven release cycle, meaning that updates will come faster and focus on single features and enhancements. This is the perfect time to get involved in the WordPress for Windows Phone project. Check out make.wordpress.org/mobile and the WordPress for Windows Phone dev blog to see how you can get involved!

If you’d like to help us translate the app into your native language, check out the translation project.

Galleries are a great way to share pictures with your friends and followers. An image gallery will display thumbnails for all images attached to a particular post or page. Readers can tap or click any image to launch the gallery full-screen, displaying huge versions of your images.

You can create a gallery straight from your device by attaching two or more pictures to a post or a page. You can even customize the appearance of a gallery by tapping the “gallery settings” button and choosing the best options for your site.

Gallery Styles

You have great control over how the gallery will be displayed: as a thumbnail grid, as a tiled mosaic-style grid, or as a slideshow. A tiled mosaic-style grid has Rectangular, Square, and Circular formatting options, for a total of 5 choices.

Below is an example of an image gallery using the default thumbnail setting. If you click on any of the images you will be able to see what the carousel view looks like:

Gallery with square tiles

Gallery with circular tiles

Gallery as a slideshow
Click to view slideshow.

Easy Site and Dashboard Access

A no brainer. We added buttons on the Blog Screen to view your public website as well as a Dashboard link so you can access your full WordPress Dashboard to modify plugins, widgets, and more.

More improvements and bug fixes

This release also includes improvements for WordPress.com and Jetpack Stats, as well as fixes for crashes and other bugs. You can see the details on what was taken care of on the trac roadmap.

Download

Ready to get the latest? Click the link below to update the best WordPress app for Windows Phone so far.

Download AppWordPress for Windows PhoneSupported: WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress (v. 2.9+)

Contributors

A huge thanks to the contributors that worked on this release: daniloercoli, sendhil.

Would you like to get in on the fun? Let us know at windowsphonedev.wordpress.org  or head on over to make/mobile on WordPress.org and we’ll help you get started as a contributor.  Do you have an idea for a new feature or have you encountered a bug that needs fixing? Tell us about it on the WordPress for Windows Phone Trac.

Make sure to follow @WPWindowsPhone on Twitter to get the latest news first.

Featured Images Support

We’re happy to report that you can now upload a Featured Image for your blog posts as long as your theme supports it. To set an image as featured, just tap on it after adding it to the post content area and click the ‘feature’ button — see the screenshot on the right.

Note that you’ll need WordPress 3.4.1 or greater and a theme that supports featured images in order to use this feature.

Full Screen Editing

Your phone has a relatively small screen and when writing a post, a large portion of it is taken up by the keyboard. While you’re not likely to write “The Divine Comedy” on your phone, wouldn’t it be great to have just a little more space? In 1.9 the content editor has its own page that fills the whole screen.

When the post is ready to go, just press the back button and you’ll be right back in the Post editor.

Reliability Improvements

In addition to the new features, we’ve worked hard on making the app even more stable and fast. In total, almost 20 bugs and crashes have been fixed in this release. You can see the details on what was taken care of on the trac roadmap.

Download

Ready to get the latest? Click the link below to update the best WordPress app for Windows Phone so far.

Download AppWordPress for Windows PhoneSupported: WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress (v. 2.9+)

Contributors

A huge thanks to the contributors that worked on this release:  aerych, daniloercoli.

Would you like to get in on the fun? Let us know at windowsphonedev.wordpress.org  or head on over to make/mobile on WordPress.org and we’ll help you get started as a contributor.  Do you have an idea for a new feature or have you encountered a bug that needs fixing? Tell us about it on the WordPress for Windows Phone Trac.

Make sure to follow @WPWindowsPhone on Twitter to get the latest news first.

• Fixed crash when the translation files had an empty string in it.
• Fixed crash when the media library contained a corrupted image on Edit Post Page.
• Minor layout issue on HTC 8X.
• Other bugfixes.

Check out the Trac milestone for the complete list.

What’s next?

We’re currently hard at work with WordPress for WindowsPhone 1.9 – the next major release of the app.
The most important to-do in the 1.9 road map is Featured Image, improvements on the Editor Page, as well as a few more nifty improvements.

How are you liking version 1.8.1, and what would you like to see next? Leave us a comment here and follow us @WPWindowsPhone on Twitter to get the latest news first.

Comments moderation changes

Save time by moderating several comments at once with the new “bulk edit” mode. The ability to moderate multiple comments at once is now available right from the comments list.

Simply tap the moderate icon in the toolbar to access bulk moderation. Tap the checkboxes next to the comments to select them, then tap a moderation option to moderate them all at once.

But wait, there’s more! It’s now possible to filter comments by their status, just open the menu and select one of the filters.

Here are other improvements and bugs fixed in version 1.8:

• Multi-sites and subdirectory installations can now be added to the app without hassle, as long as the app can access the RSD endpoint of your site.
• Bug fix: the loading indicator no longer occasionally stays on the screen when the back button is pressed.
• A bunch of minor issues related to the connectivity layer were fixed in this release.

Contributors

The following contributors have worked on this release of WordPress for Windows Phone:  aerych, daniloercoli.

Would you like to get in on the fun? Let us know at windowsphonedev.wordpress.org and we’ll help you get started as a contributor.  Do you have an idea for a new feature or have you encountered a bug that needs fixing? Tell us about it on the WordPress for Windows Phone Trac.

Make sure to follow @WPWindowsPhone on Twitter to get the latest news first.

New Features

• Local Drafts
  Nothing’s worse than working on a great post only to have it disappear because of a bad internet connection. That’s why we made it possible to save a new post or page as a Local Draft on your device.
• Multimedia Management improvements
  Adding photos to your blog posts is now easier than ever. You can choose to upload straight from the camera or from the photo library on your device. You can also now set the positioning (i.e: display at the top or bottom of your post) by tapping the picture on the Edit screen.
• Post Format Support
  At the bottom of the Edit screen, you’ll now see an option for setting the post format for your posts. The app will check with your blog to get a list of post formats that your theme supports.
• Windows Phone 8 compatibility
  While this release focuses mainly on bugs and performance enhancements, it also includes some updates to help Windows Phone users take advantage of the latest addition from Microsoft: Windows Phone 8!

Version 1.7 also includes numerous other bug fixes and improvements not listed here. For a full list, visit the 1.7 Trac milestone.

As always, your feedback and input on this release will help guide us as we work hard on the next release, which we’ve already started coding. If you feel like 1.7 is an improvement over the previous release, feel free to leave us a review in the Marketplace to let everyone else know that they should upgrade.

Additionally, we welcome your feedback in the forums and on Twitter.

Contributors

The following contributors have worked on this release of WordPress for Windows Phone:  aerych, isaackeyet, daniloercoli, and mrroundhill!

Getting Involved?

Development is continuing at a very rapid pace. We are already marching towards the next release of the app. So far we are keen on adding a better Post Editor, and support for Featured Images. Want to help out? Check out make.wordpress.org/mobile and the WordPress for Windows Phone dev blog to see how you can get involved!

If you’d like to help us translate the app into your native language, check out the translation project.

Happy blogging!

If this sounds like a great way to spend an hour of your day then we’d like to hear from you. So join #wordpress-mobile (chat.freenode.net) every Wednesday at 18:00 15:00 UTC to get started. Hope to see you there!

• Stats: We’ve moved the stats section to its own page in the app which greatly improved the loading time for the blog panorama. While we were at it we fixed some bugs and improved the styling of the charts. The result is a much smoother experience for keeping up with your site’s stats. Just tap the new stats button in the actions pane to view your stats.
• Post scheduling: The ability to schedule posts was a missing piece in the app. Now you can easily set a future publish date for your posts right from the app.
• Comments: The comments list has been updated and now features a simple way to select multiple comments for bulk moderation.
• Infinite scrolling: Your posts, pages, and comments now keep loading as you scroll down the list. No need to tap an extra button, it’s quick and easy.
• Media uploading: The uploading reliability has been greatly improved. Now the app uploads your media in bite-size chunks, and automatically retries if you lose your connection. This has been tested a great deal and works well in most everyday situations.

In addition to the improvements and bug fixes, version 1.5 of WordPress for Windows Phone has also seen some minor UI enhancements and updates, as well as a number of crash fixes. All in all, we’re very happy with this release, which should make it even easier for you to blog from that fancy Windows Phone of yours.

We’re not resting just yet though. What would you like to see added to or improved on in the app? Comment on this post or shout out on Twitter and let us know your thoughts.

Huge thanks to everyone involved in this release: Dan Roundhill, Danilo Ercoli, Robert Collins, Max Cutler.

Landscape Editing

Got your thumbs warmed up? Good! The post editor can now be rotated to landscape mode, giving you access to a larger keyboard for typing out your post content. We’ve also made it easier to navigate the post editor view.

The landscape editor

The new panorama view

UI Improvements

The panorama view UI has been improved to give you more space to view your blog’s content. You can now view a lot more posts, pages and comments in the scroll view at once. We’ve also added a better loading indicator so you won’t have to wait for a network task to complete before you move on to another area of the panorama.

New Language Translations

Thanks to the brilliant WordPress Polyglots, the app has been translated to French, German, Italian and Spanish. Fantástico! If you’d like to translate the app to your own language, you can get started at translate.wordpress.org.

Under the Hood Fixes

1.2 also includes many bug fixes, including:

• Better support for post pingbacks in the comment view.
• Fixed comment submission date from being changed when moderating.
• Preview now works for drafts, scheduled and private posts/pages.
• Prompt added if the back button is accidentally tapped while creating a post.

A complete list of all of the fixes can be found on our trac site.

Don’t forget that WordPress for Windows Phone is an open source project. If you’re interested in getting involved, please get in touch with us on the Developer Blog.

Download AppWordPress for Windows Phone 7Supported: WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress (v. 3.0+)

Fixed in 1.1

Bugs:

• Saving drafts should now work correctly
• Categories are now saved
• Bold text formatting fixed
• API key now saves

Enhancements:

• The app now auto-corrects typed text

Look out for the update in the Marketplace soon! Please let us know if you’re experiencing other problems in the WordPress for Windows Phone 7 Forums.