How to enable iPhone Push Notifications for comments/pingbacks/messages on your WordPress blog

Push notifications are all the craze nowadays for iPhone/iPod Touch users. If you’re a blogger like me, you probably love Push notifications to get quick alerts of whatever is happening around you or the latest tweets you get ( via Boxcar and the likes ) and so on. I recently installed WPtouch for www.ithinkdiff.com ( this blog, duh! ) and found out a pleasant surprise that it enables push notifications for new comments and pingbacks on your blog.

It does so through an application called Prowl (available for $2.99 in the App Store) and a plug-in installed on your blog. The plug-in uses the Prowl API to notify it when there are new comments/pingbacks, a message from a reader or even new user accounts on your blog which is in turn sent to your iPhone/iPod Touch as a Push Notification. Here’s a small guide on how to get push notifications up and running.

Instructions:

• First of all, you’ll have to grab the latest beta of WPTouch (RC2 at the time of writing this). Install it to your WordPress blog.
• You’ll also have to buy Prowl from App Store ( link ) and install it to your iPhone/iPod Touch. Create a new id at http://prowl.weks.net or just use the Prowl App to setup a new one.

• Go to http://prowl.weks.net/settings.php. You’ll get a new API Key in the settings which you’ll have to enter in Push Notification Options in the WPtouch plug-in settings in your WordPress Dashboard.
• Chose the type of Push Notifications you want to receive in the Push Notification Options.
• And you’re done. Now any new event ( comment, message via the WPtouch theme, pingback and new user account – whatever you’ve selected in the options) will be pushed to your iPhone. Remember to have Push notifications enabled.
• You can also setup Prowl App to open up the WordPress App whenever you get a new push notification from your WordPress blog.  WordPress isn’t available in the list of Launchable Apps for now, but hopefully, they’ll update the Launchable list with it soon.

• Important Note: Right now, the plug-in doesn’t differentiate between spam comments and the real ones, so you’ll get push notifications for Spam as well sadly.
• Important Note number 2: If you’ve got WP-Super Cache installed, you’ll have to put it to Half-on mode, and enable mobile device support so that non-logged in users can see the WPtouch iPhone theme. Even if you don’t do this, you’ll still get Push Notifications, but users won’t be able to see the WPtouch theme on their mobile devices and also be unable to send you direct messages through the theme.

If you’ve got any questions, post them in the comments below and I’ll be happy to help you out. :)