Automattic volunteered some astounding statistics, revealing that thousands of people have been using iPhone and Blackberry applications to publish and moderate content on WordPress.com. Secondly, it was said that WordPress.com, as a whole, receives over 60 million page views a month on mobile devices. There’s no doubt that Automattic has an interest of being the hero in your pocket. There is a much different story with the millions of self-hosted WordPress users. As it stands, if you’re running a self-hosted WordPress blog, making it mobile friendly doesn’t come quite as easy. And also, it’s not done automatically as it is for WordPress.com users.

But that’s ok! Fortunately for self-hosted WordPress users, making your WordPress blog mobile friendly isn’t too difficult at all. Here are a few options available to you that will help you get started on the right foot.

WPtouch: Mobile Plugin + Theme for WordPress

With 300,000 downloads, WPtouch has become one of the most popular and widely accepted WordPress mobile plugins available. WPtouch gives you the ability to convert your blog and optimize for iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, and BlackBerry users. It was modeled after Apple’s app store design specs, and is geared towards helping you make your blog load fast, and to make your content display beautifully for viewers using modern mobile devices.

WordPress Mobile Edition

WordPress Mobile Edition is a plugin, with over 100,000 downloads, that shows an interface designed for a mobile device when visitors come to your site on a mobile device. Mobile browsers are automatically detected, the list of mobile browsers can be customized on the settings page. One of the more appealing features of WordPress Mobile Edition is that it serves a mobile interface to Google and Yahoo mobile search crawlers. You can also add any others by adding their user agents in the plugin’s Settings page. All in all, WordPress Mobile is a mobile/phone/PDA friendly interface for your blog with progressive enhancement for advanced mobile browsers.

Enable The Mobile Web With MobilePress

MobilePress is a WordPress plugin that has been downloaded 40,000 times and will render your WordPress blog on mobile handsets. It also offers owners the ability to use customized themes, in addition to allowing specific themes for specific devices, such as iPhone, Opera Mini, Windows CE Mobile and other mobile browsers.

MobilePress also allows WordPress theme developers to create custom mobile themes for WordPress blogs using the MobilePress plugin. Theme designers can also then create specific iPhone themes or generic themes. The plugin also comes with mobile SEO features which automatically detect Google and Yahoo mobile search bots. These mobile search bots will see the mobile version of you blog which allows your blog to optimized and indexed on Google and Yahoo mobile search.

In my opinion, I like WPTouch the best. However, the other two plugins offer some SEO features that shouldn’t be ignored. Google Webmaster Central Blog just released some tips on how to help Google index your mobile site more easily. If you discover that your blog isn’t index in Google Mobile, you might want to spend some time correcting that. And using one of the two latter plugins may help.

With that being said, today I want to talk to you a little bit about the wonderful world of mobile Internet and how its explosive growth could be leaving you missing out on scoring traffic to your web site or blog. Ironically, it was just recently on July 8th, 2008, The Washington Post released an article explaining that the United States is one of the top countries to make use of Mobile Internet and I believe that to be true. If you consider this situation for a minute you might start to see where I am coming from here. I am not the only one who uses my mobile phone to surf the web. While there are still large numbers of individuals who don’t, these numbers are decreasing every day.

I use my mobile phone to surf the web. In fact, I use my mobile phone more to surf the web than I use it to talk on it. Strangely enough as I am out and about in the mall or in the grocery store I see more and more people walking around aimlessly while they are using their mobile phones to surf the Internet. So, the question I have to ask you is this: what will happen if someone attempts to access your blog or web site using their mobile device? Will your site load up? What will it look like? Most importantly, will your mobile visitors like it?

For me, as a mobile Internet user, I am constantly on the hunt for sites that look and function very well on my mobile phone. For the time being, there two Internet worlds. One is the traditional Internet that people have been using for the last ten years or so. The second, is a new Internet world, the world of mobile Internet. When I use my mobile device to surf the web, I tend to cling to the sites that I discover to be more functional in my mobile device. In fact, I feel terrible when I can’t enjoy visiting some of my most favorite sites using my mobile device.

So what does this mean for you? Well, the way I see it, I see this as a huge opportunity for you to shine. I see this as being a great way for you to push your web site forward over and beyond your competitors. Think about it this way. If you were to invest the time and possibly a little amount of money into making sure that your web site or blog was mobile friendly, you could then advertise that fact to your readers and site visitors. Upon discovering this fact, your readers and visitors will remember this and grow even closer and more fond of your site, knowing that they can visit you anytime they want.

Imagine how powerful your web site or blog could be if people were able to access it while shopping at the mall. Imagine how useful your web site or blog could be if people were able to view all your high quality content and articles while on their lunch break at work. Today we live in a world where many people feel like they can’t live without the Internet. They feel such a connection with the Internet that they purchase mobile devices such as a mobile Internet ready cell phone just so that they can take the Internet on the road with them. Unfortunately, there isn’t a large percentage of sites that are conscious of what their readers and site visitors want. People want more mobile friendly web sites. If you can be a pioneer in your niche market, then you can easily become king.

Stick around and be sure to subscribe to the SEOHosting.com RSS feed. In my next article I am going to talk more about how you can make your web site or blog mobile user friendly. In this next article I will show you step by step on how you can quickly and easily make your blog or web site look absolutely amazing in a cell phone. So stay tuned! In the mean time, be sure to check out our unique blend of SEO Hosting Plans available. While it is important to have a web site or blog that is mobile friendly, it is equally if not more important to make sure it is search engine optimized. SEOHosting.com provides solutions to help you with that.