Blogging by email on the Nokia Asha 205

We’ve all got used to browsing the Internet on our mobile phones – checking the weather, keeping up to date on Facebook, the latest sports scores and more, but it doesn’t all have to be about consuming media. You can update blogs and create content for your websites using Nokia’s most affordable handsets, such as theNokia Asha 205. I’ve been trying out blogging on the Asha – read on to find out how I’ve been getting on.

Blogging from your mobile phone is a great idea: it’s instant; you can do it wherever you go, and you don’t need a computer to keep your readers updated.

Asha owners may already have noticed that there aren’t any blogging apps in the Nokia store, but that doesn’t mean the end of your blogging fun. On the contrary, you can actually use your Asha’s emailing capabilities to blog, thanks to WordPress, Google’sMail-to-Blogger and Tumblr’s Email Publishing.

So how does it work, then? Where you’d traditionally use a web browser and CMS for adding content to your blog, posting by email does exactly what it says on the tin. You write what you want to post in an email, click send, and it appears on your blog.

This is especially useful for handsets with small screens, such as the Nokia Asha 205. When you’re writing your blog post, all you need to see is the text itself, with none of the screen wasted on the other details you’d normally find when using a CMS page.

I already had a WordPress blog, so this was the site I decided to try updating with my Nokia Asha 205. To start with, you’ll need to log into the WordPress CMS using a web browser, even if you intend to make all your further updates via email. Once you’ve logged in, head into your WordPress Dashboard, click on ‘Settings’, and ‘Writing’. There are a number of defaults you can set – such as the category your blog updates automatically appear in, but it’s then time to set up email support.  

There’s a section at the bottom of the page called ‘Post by Email’, with the text: “You can publish posts using emails with the Post by Email feature. To enable this visit your My Blogs page and create a secret address.”

Click the link to ‘My Blogs’, and then ‘Enable’ under the Post by Email column. When you press the button, WordPress will automatically generate a secure email account for you; remember this email address, as it’s the account you’ll need to send an email to when you want to update your blog.

Time to send an email

That’s it on the techy side of things; your WordPress blog should now be set up to handle blogging via email. When you want to post an update from your Nokia Asha, log into your email account, and create a new email with your newly generated WordPress address as the recipient.

The subject field in your email will be the headline in your blog, and the email copy will become the main blog content. Once you hit send, head over to your blog and check out the new post. It may take a minute or two to appear, but I was amazed at how quickly the latest posts appeared on my blog.  

Better yet, you won’t be restricted to text – you can take photographs on your Nokia Asha, attach them to an email, and as soon as the email hits the WordPress inbox the post and photographs will appear on your blog along with any other copy you add to the email.

It’s all incredibly easy to do, and it’s a great way of keeping your blog updated if you don’t have regular access to a computer. It also means you can keep your blog updated wherever you go, at any time, with the tap of a button. What’s not to like?