Moblogging with WordPress
Sunday, February 15, 2009
In a previous article we discussed mobile blogging with Moblog in ExpressionEngine. In WordPress posting via email is not a built-in feature, but we have used the plugin Postie to accomplish this. Once installed, configuration is handled from a tab in the Options section of the WP admin. A cron job or scheduled task (Windows) executes the Postie script and adds the post.
Configuration is straightforward. On the Configure Postie page, enter the mail server settings and email account to which posts will be sent. Authorization to post can be set by user role and by specified email addresses (strongly recommended). A default category and title can be specified, but Postie will use the email subject as the title, and the category can be set there as well:
Subject: General: New News
The post entitled New News will be in the General category. A post can be added to multiple categories:
Subject: [General] [News] Title of Post
Text delimiters can be set and signature blocks can be removed to prevent the entire message body from being posted. Settings to handle images include resizing, placement, JPEG compression, and CSS styles. Videos can be embedded using QuickTime. Very handy.
If WordPress is running on a Windows server, create a .bat file or use the scheduler to run the file get_mail.php (in the Postie directory) as often as you want to check for email.
Note: The Postie site above is active among users but apparently the site owner no longer contributes.