The debate keeps going amongst those of us who use free blogging platforms like WordPress.com or Blogger.com. I myself have blogs on both and WordPress often wins but I don’t have the heart to switch my Blogger one over.
In March of this year WordPress.com unveiled another important feature – an easy iPad theme that you could add as an option to any WordPress.com blog. It’s called OnSwipe and it’s also available as a plugin for self-hosted WordPress blogs.
This is the way my blog normally looks on my iPad. Same as desktop.
This is the iPad themed version instead.
This is how a post would look.
Pros
- so easy to install – it’s just an option on your Dashboard under Appearance
- makes the iPad viewing experience easy and very pretty
- you can see more of your posts with photos in a Flipboard-like magazine type layout
- you can adjust the colour and font and also add a Cover Image or Launch Image
- readers can opt-out back to the Desktop site at the bottom
Cons
- all that website design you put effort into? Well it’s gone because the iPad theme just makes all the blogs look the same
- it doesn’t have a Sticky Post feature to keep the stickies up top
- how many of us have a Launch Image ready that is 764X1004 px big for our site in a PNG format? I don’t have mine done yet
- a few times I’ve come across the iPad version of a WP.com blog and it’s actually shut down Safari on my iPad
- if you choose to just have a random blog image as your Cover/Launch image it really is quite random and not always a good thing bc the resolution will likely suck on the images you normally have posted
- some readers are annoyed by the automatic redirect and would rather see your desktop site
So in short I think it looks very nice and as a reader it is very easy to surf that way especially since you just flip between the pages. But it takes away the individuality of everyone’s website designs and it’s almost like an RSS reader but prettier.
I don’t have it activated on this Twi-Mobile site for now because frankly I’d like to have a customized Cover image for the iPad site and I don’t have time to make it. A small thing but important.
Feedback on which you think is better?
Twi-Mobile Network 