I had posted this at my blog – mattwade.tumblr.com but thought I would cross post it here:-
I volunteer at Hospital Radio Chelmsford as I have since 1991 and recently they have released a new website and Facebook Fan Page to improve their online presence.
This lead me onto helping them to create an iPhone oprtimised website to run in conjunction with the main site. I knew that the facility existed in wordpress to automatically format the page into a readable experience on the iPhone so I thought I would write up how I did it so if anyone else wishes to do it they can.
As with anything run by volunteers the idea is to reduce effort/time to a minimum so the webmaster did not want it to increase his workload. The main site already produced a couple of different RSS feeds and so this was key to automating the process.
I installed a wordpress installation into the /iphone/ directory on the website which was going to be the url and from there it was down to the plugins. Firstly the plugin I used which formats the site for iPhone is called ‘WPtouch iPhone Theme’ and then to import the RSS feeds and process them as Posts I used a plugin called ‘FeedWordPress’.
Both of these plugins once installed are easy to configure to your needs. The FeedWordPress allows you to set a category for each RSS feed you import and it will automatically poll the RSS feeds every hour for changes so the webmaster needs do nothing except update the main site.
From there it was just a matter of making a front page which would be the static page on the site you would see when first visiting the site and getting hold of any missing icons I needed. I bit of searching around found me the html I needed to get the site to operate the SMS messages and the Calling function from the site which automatically makes the iPhone go into the SMS app or the Phone app.
All this work can be seen at the site which is www.hrc.org.uk/iphone. It doesn’t look pretty if viewing in the normal web browser but on the iPhone or Android phone it formats correcly but feel free to copy the html if you want.
Hope you find this of interest – Matt
It’s Back!
On the Podcast we talk with Chris Brooks founder of Yellow Media about the radio courses on offer there along with what makes a good demo tape and presenter along with some radio chat.
Also there are all the details of how to get in touch with the Podcast if you would like to take part.
Direct Download here
Links Mentioned:-
www.onairpodcast.co.uk
www.yellow-media.co.uk
www.audioboo.fm
www.psquared.net
www.facebook.com/onairpodcast
www.mattwadeonline.co.uk
Podcast: Play in new window
| Download
So the plan is to have a feature in each podcast where the same 10 questions are asked of a Hospital Radio volunteer.
The bit I need your help on is coming up with the 10 questions. I will stick down some of my question ideas and please either add your comment to the website www.onairpodcast.co.uk or as a comment on the Facebook Fan Page – http://www.facebook.com/pages/On-Air-Podcast/210250705913
So here are some questions I have thought about
1 – What do you do at your Hospital Radio station?
2 – Why did you decide to volunteer for Hospital Radio?
3 – What has been your best moment at Hospital Radio?
4 – If you could change one thing about Hospital Radio what would it be?
5 – What is your favourite jingle?
6 – Who is your Broadcasting Hero?
That’s it for the moment please comment and add in any questions you think are missing – Matt
So Christmas is just around the corner and I hope you all have a great time. The end of the year always brings me to think about the past year and the future.
I have been thinking about the desire for people to have a podcast designed for Hospital Radio members and feel there is still a requirement to share information via the medium of audio which after all is the area we all love.
I am looking for feedback and contributions from all users of the site. I would like to do more interviews with HR members and devise a set of 10 questions to be asked to each contributor which I need your help on. I will set up some comment ability of the site to enable this.
Continuing on from this. I am going to pay again for the site to be hosted as I have been given a great deal. I will look for sponsorship from companies to enable me to do this at no cost to myself going forward as I can’t afford to keep on paying out. So expect some changes.
M
