Most of the content and administration of Ask-A-Geek is done from a phone, believe it or not. Even a majority of the WordPress Remote Poster script available here was written and tested on an HTC Hero phone. So depending on what type of maintenance you are trying to do you could probably do most of it through a smart phone.
Here are some things I use to make the mobile site maintenance work for me.
Net2Ftp.com
Net2FTP is what I use as an FTP client for my server. It works pretty well through a phone (though it loads a little slow at times). Net2FTP allows you to upload and download any type of file to or from the server as well as lets you edit any ASCII file through the web browser. This makes it nice if you want to download an HTML file and make edits to it before reuploading it or if it is a really quick change you can do it right from the browser window. I use Net2FTP to edit a bunch of Perl files that are running behind the scenes here.
Text Edit
Check out your phone’s marketplace for an app called Text Edit. It is awesome for writing or editing text files and you’ll find that writing in Text Edit and uploading the content through Net2FTP is a pretty slick process. If you have a computer handy and can’t do site maintenance for security reasons (or you just don’t want to get in trouble surfing the web), type the file on your computer and save it directly to the phone as a text file. Open the file in Text Edit to make any further changes to it (or just upload it to Net2FTP).
Dolphin Browser HD
Check out your phone’s marketplace for Dolphin Browser HD. It’s a very useful browser to use as you can have numerous tabs open at the same time (which if you’re doing it right, you should have a lot of different windows open when playing with your site!). The Dolphin Browser HD browser works really well with Text Edit and Net2FTP or other sites which you’d like to post text to- all you do is open the text file in Text Edit and copy the text to clipboard and then paste it to the browser with Dolphin Browser.
With the tools mentioned above it is quite possible to do most (if not all) of the maintenance of a website solely through a smart phone. There are different browser and text editor apps out there you may want to look into but, from experience, these work the best together. Of course if your site is blog-based you can certainly log into the admin panel and make live changes to your site that way or if you have Cpanel hosting you can check the web traffic coming into your site by logging into that (all without using any apps).
Web design and maintenance through a phone IS possible. It may take a little time to get used to the process but once you figure it out you’ll find yourself checking out your sites while on the bus or when you’re waiting for someone at a restaurant or something.
Most of the content and administration of Ask-A-Geek is done from a phone, believe it or not. Even a majority of the WordPress Remote Poster script available here was written and tested on an HTC Hero phone. So depending on what type of maintenance you are trying to do you could probably do most of it through a smart phone.
Here are some things I use to make the mobile site maintenance work for me.
Net2Ftp.com
Net2FTP is what I use as an FTP client for my server. It works pretty well through a phone (though it loads a little slow at times). Net2FTP allows you to upload and download any type of file to or from the server as well as lets you edit any ASCII file through the web browser. This makes it nice if you want to download an HTML file and make edits to it before reuploading it or if it is a really quick change you can do it right from the browser window. I use Net2FTP to edit a bunch of Perl files that are running behind the scenes here.
Text Edit
Check out your phone’s marketplace for an app called Text Edit. It is awesome for writing or editing text files and you’ll find that writing in Text Edit and uploading the content through Net2FTP is a pretty slick process. If you have a computer handy and can’t do site maintenance for security reasons (or you just don’t want to get in trouble surfing the web), type the file on your computer and save it directly to the phone as a text file. Open the file in Text Edit to make any further changes to it (or just upload it to Net2FTP).
Dolphin Browser HD
Check out your phone’s marketplace for Dolphin Browser HD. It’s a very useful browser to use as you can have numerous tabs open at the same time (which if you’re doing it right, you should have a lot of different windows open when playing with your site!). The Dolphin Browser HD browser works really well with Text Edit and Net2FTP or other sites which you’d like to post text to- all you do is open the text file in Text Edit and copy the text to clipboard and then paste it to the browser with Dolphin Browser.
With the tools mentioned above it is quite possible to do most (if not all) of the maintenance of a website solely through a smart phone. There are different browser and text editor apps out there you may want to look into but, from experience, these work the best together. Of course if your site is blog-based you can certainly log into the admin panel and make live changes to your site that way or if you have Cpanel hosting you can check the web traffic coming into your site by logging into that (all without using any apps).
Web design and maintenance through a phone IS possible. It may take a little time to get used to the process but once you figure it out you’ll find yourself checking out your sites while on the bus or when you’re waiting for someone at a restaurant or something.