WordPress mobile app

WordPress is an amazing blogging/cms platform and having a mobile app makes editing so much easier, but if you have a self-hosted WordPress blog and your host blocks xmlrpc.php (like namesco) then you might think you can’t use the mobile app. Good news, though: you can.

Follow these simple steps and you’ll be using the brand-new WordPress app in no time at all.

You will want to read these instructions through beforehand and if you don’t understand any of it, or aren’t sure if you can safely do this then ask someone more technically able to help you out.

We assume no responsibility for anything going wrong because of this – back up everything, always.

That said, good luck. Here’s how to do it:

1> Download the xmlrpc files from your WordPress installation

Using your FTP access or your Host’s file-manager utility, download the following files:

xmlrpc.php
class-wp-xmlrpc-server.php
general-template.php

The first file is in the top level of your WordPress installation, the other two are in wp-includes.

You will want to keep a copy of these somewhere in case something goes awry.

2> Rename xmlrpc.php to something completely different

After you rename xmlrpc.php to something new (I used renamed.php, seemed to work), You will then have to open each of the three files in turn in Notepad and do a find/replace to replace xmlrpc.php with the name that you changed it to.  Make sure you replace every instance of xmlrpc.php in the three files.

3> Upload the edited files to your webspace

After renaming or deleting the original files on your host, upload the edited files, making sure that the permissions are set to 644 for all three.

4> Enjoy

We hope this helps someone, it’s been a headache to figure out. Remember that if you use a ‘maintenance mode’ plugin, you’ll need to add /renamed.php (or whatever you named the xmlrpc.php file) to the whitelist or accessible paths in the plugin settings for it to work when maintenance mode is active.

Note that this won’t work with the Dashboard or Stats links on the new WP android app, nor will it allow you to use the Jetpack Plugin, so you may want to talk to your web host about allowing you access. Should they refuse, then you might want to find a host that doesn’t impose a blanket ban on all of it’s users.

Update: 26/12/11 – The authors of the Android app are aware of the Dashboard issue and are looking into it.

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