An interesting thing happened while I was checking my Yahoo! Mail this morning. A little notification popped up telling me that I had an extra feature named “Applications” and asked if I would like to see the “Gallery”. So I had a look and it appears that Yahoo! has integrated some applications in the their Mail program. To my delight, as I was scanning the (short) list of apps, and the oh so familiar WordPress logo seemed to call right to me. Could it be? WordPress inside my Yahoo! Mail!?
I forged ahead with configuring the WordPress application and thought you might like to see the process. In fact, I am writing this entire post from within of my Yahoo! Mail client. I just tried to insert an image, which it will allow you to do, but you can only insert an image URL, not browse your machine and upload let’s say, a screenshot of Yahoo! and WordPress in action. Strike one. I am now writing from within my WordPress installation.
First things first. In the left side of your Yahoo! Mail page (assuming you’re using the “New” Yahoo! Mail), you will see a new section named Applications. Click the word Applications and you will be presented with the application Gallery.
After reading through the descriptions of the various apps, I eventually clicked Add next to WordPress and was presented with a standard legal agreement message.
Of course I agreed, it’s WordPress;) I then went back to the left side of my Yahoo! Mail screen and now saw WordPress listed under the Applications menu.
After clicking on WordPress, the Blog Settings screen appears and you are prompted to add your blog connection information. Please note that this will work for both WordPress.com and WordPress.org blogs (or self-hosted). There is one slight difference in the Blog URL that you will enter depending on what type of WordPress blog you’re connecting to.
If you’re connecting to a WordPress.com blog, simply enter the standard URL: http://example.com
If you’re connecting to a self hosted version of WordPress, enter the domain name and the path to the xmlrpc.php file. This is usually found in the root of your WordPress install. Look at the second screenshot below to see what I mean…
Yaay! We’re connected. Let’s have a look at the Write Post panel. It pops up as an additional tab in your mail screen. You should notice a few things about the visual editor here. First, it’s not the same as the visual editor as in the normal WordPress dashboard. It has some limitations, but I didn’t feel like anything major was missing. That’s what I thought before trying to add an image.
As you can see below there is an Add Image icon, and you can add images, but as referenced above, you are required to add an image URL. I do not see any way to browse to an image on my local machine and upload. Not cool, and yes, it’s kind of a big deal as I use WordPress to create screenshot-laden posts just like this one. We’ll see what happens in the coming weeks, maybe this feature is just over the horizon.
There was another little feature that caught my eye on the bottom of the Write Post tab as seen in the screenshot below. You can drag an email from your inbox to the WordPress app in the Yahoo! Mail sidebar to blog it. I can’t think of a time I would need this, but it seems like a pretty slick little option.
I wonder what happens if the email has images attached?
This looks like a great start to using WordPress inside Yahoo! Mail, and I would definately use this if I could upload images. I have Mail open all day long and this is a welcome addition. However, there are many questions and room for improvement.
- Please let me upload images!
- Are Drafts being saved as they are in the Dashboard?
- What about categories? Didn’t see that option. Although tags are possible?
- How about multiple blog connections?
Can you think of anything else that should be included? We’d all love to hear your thoughts!
