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When I found out yesterday morning that the long-awaited WordPress BlackBerry application was available in beta form, I couldn’t have been more ecstatic. As someone who has about a half dozen blogs on the WordPress platform, this tool will be of great benefit. Since I know many other geeks out there have blogs of their own, I figured I’d quickly go over the available features. Remember, this is still a beta, so there will be bug and incomplete features. Even so, I’d call this one a winner right now.

To install the app, head to http://blackberry.wordpress.org/install from your BlackBerry browser and download. Whenever an update is available, you’ll get a prompt to update. I downloaded and tested the app yesterday morning, and by the afternoon there was already a new version. Pretty killer, eh?

You’ll also have to grant the application permissions before starting up, and will have to do that after installing an update as well. Once you do that, though, you’ll be on the home screen.

Before you even try to add your blog, you’ll have to change one of the settings. Login to your admin panel, and go to Settings -> Writing and make sure XML-RPC is enabled. Otherwise you’ll get an error message when trying to register.

There you’ll either click the Add Blog button, or click Menu and select Add Blog. Here you will enter in your blog URL, plus your WordPress username and password. You can set how many recent posts you want to see in the edit screen, and finally you’ll have the option to automatically resize photos for quicker uploading. Save it up, and you’re ready to do some mobile blogging.

The interface is rather simple. The home screen links include Posts, Pages, Comments, Options, and Refresh.

In Posts you’ll see however many recent posts you set when adding your blog. Get used to manually refreshing this screen — it seems to not automatically refresh even when you log out and then log back in. From here you can create a new post by hitting New atop the screen. You can also edit posts by hovering over and clicking the trackball or hitting Menu and selecting Edit.

Post information includes Title, Tags, Categories, Status, and the post body. Predictably, there is no visual editor. To add or edit categories, hit the Menu button and select Categories. In order to publish a new post, you must manually change the status to Published. Then click Menu and select Submit. You can also add photos by hitting Menu and selecting Photos. And, of course, you can save your draft without publishing by hitting Menu and Save Draft.

Settings are also available on posts, which allow you to edit the timestamp on the post, set a password, and automatically resize photos.

Pages works the same way as Posts. Comments will list comments from users in reverse order. Options will bring up the same screen as when you add a new blog. Again, it’s pretty simple.

I have a few gripes, of course, like the inability to close comments on posts, but this is beta so I’ll keep most of them to myself. You’ll need a self-hosted WordPress Blog running 2.5.1 or higher, plus a BlackBerry with OS 4.2.1 or higher to run the WordPress mobile app. Expect a full walk-through once we get a full release.

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