How To

How to use Mobile Web Server: Part 2

Jose Marinez

Part 2 of the series takes your new mobile site a step further. Learn how to customize your theme, allow access to device content,  post to your mobile blog and more.

In Part 1 of this series [1], we registered your mobile site and got Mobile Web Server running on your device. Now it's time to take advantage of its many features.

Follow the Wizard!

Our mobile server is installed and running, but we haven’t told it what to “serve” to web users. The easiest way to do that is to to use the web interface via the mobile web server itself.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Make sure your server is set to Running.

2. Open up a browser on your PC and go to http//username.mymobilesite.net. My username is mobi, so my URL is http://mobi.mymobilesite.net. (If my site is offline, check out http://demo.mymobilesite.net [2].)

3. Log in to your site with the username and password from your registration.

4. The first thing you’ll find is the Settings Wizard; click Yes to get started.

Welcome/Home Page

As any other site, your mobile site has a “Welcome” page. Give it a Title and add some Content, then click Next.

Language

With this setting you select the language for the site. Select it and click Next.

Theme

This controls the look of the site. You have a few options, so play around with the themes until you find one that matches your taste. You can always change the theme at a later time by going to the My Settings tab on the top right section of your site. When you’re done, click Finish.

Home

After you click Finish in the last step, you’re taken to the Welcome/Home section of your site. You’ll notice that the title and content you created during the Settings Wizard are now in effect.

Mobile site features

While in the Home section of your site, you notice that the navigation sidebar also has a number of other options for you to select. Each one of those items in the sidebar is a feature available to you via your mobile site. Let’s examine what these are.

Blog - like any other blog out there, you can now have a blog that’s right in your pocket.

Camera - you can take a picture with your phone via your site or visitors can send you a request to take a picture.

Gallery - with this feature you or people you select can see items in your Gallery. There are a number of configurations to make it easy to create albums and access permissions.

Guestbook - let your visitors leave you a message.

Contact me - talk about instant communication, with this feature a visitor can send you an instant message or sms directly from your site. This message is almost guaranteed to reach you because the site is running off your phone.

Presence -  when you use an instant message client on a PC, it shows your status, right? Mobile web server takes the concept a bit further and expands it with information that comes right out of your phone. Presence has three areas: availability information, device state and location.  Availability information can show your device profile, your calendar availability and even your call state - available or on the phone. Device state includes things like battery, your data connection and time. Location gives your device coordinates.

Web chat - this a chat feature that visitors can use to communicate with you. You can reply back and messages show up on the site, just like any other chat system.

Calendar -  this is a web interface to the calendar running on your phone. You can create meetings, memos, to-dos, etc. right from the browser. You can also give authorized users access to your site making it perfect for planning.

Messaging - consider this a web interface to the Messaging application that runs on your device. You have access to your inbox, drafts and even the capability to send text messages and even search - all this from your site.

Phone log - just like the Messaging feature, this is a web replica of the Log application on your device. You can see missed, received and dialed calls from this section.

Contacts - with this feature you can see all your contacts in alphabetical order. A search option is also available.

Let’s blog!

Blogging is one of the most enticing features in Mobile Web Server.  How about we set it up?

Access rights

Before we write our first post, we should go over the access rights.  With access rights you can determine who can read your blog and who can comment on your blog.  These permissions can make your blog private or public depending on your settings.  For my site I give “Anonymous access” to “Read” as well as to “Read and Comment” to “Unauthorized users”.  That means that anyone can come to my mobile site and read my blog posts and also comment on posts that I’ve made.

First post

With the permissions out the way, we can now write our first post.  Like any other web blog editor, you need a title for the post and then the content.  I’ll make my title be “Hello  World!” and my content be “My first post, coming right out of my pocket! LOL.”  The content section accepts text as well as formatted HTML.  For our first post, regular text would do.

Categories

You can have your posts filed under categories.  Multiple categories are allowed and you can create them by separating them with a comma.  For this post I’ll create a category called Stuff.  Create a category if you want or need one, then select Save.

Saved

Congratulations! You’ve written your first post. Your friends can read it by going to your mobile site, then going to the Blog section of your sidebar. Notice that once saved you have the option to select a category for your post. By default there’s an All section, but if you have created a more specific category, you can select it. You also have the option of editing the post later on or adding an image if you like. There’s even an RSS feed for those who want to keep track of your whereabouts.

What’s next?

We’ve covered all the features that are available in your mobile site in great detail. We’ve even written our first post using the Blog feature. Have fun with it! Explore some of the other features and share them with others.

In the next installment, we’ll use the server for personal use directly from our computers via widgets and learn how Mobile Web Server can be used with Facebook. Until then, let me know if you find Mobile Web Server useful and how you’re using it.

[1] http:///2008/06/04/how-to-set-up-mobile-web-server-part-1/452
[2] http://demo.mymobilesite.net

Comments (10)

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ade 6:20 pm 03.06.09

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ade iwan irawan 6:21 pm 03.06.09