Create App for Ovi Store in a few minutes

Nokia’s Ovi Store gives you the opportunity to create an App for your website/blog very quickly to reach mobile devices all over the world. It’s is simple. Ovi App Wizard (beta as for now) is just an online portal to create/manage and publish your Apps to Ovi Store.

You are going to create an App which will look like below.

Assuming that you don’t have registered with Ovi App Wizard. It’s not to be confused with your Nokia Ovi account. App Wizard account is separate from the Nokia Ovi Account. You will need to register for the App Wizard account but don’t worry about that the App Wizard will do it all for you.

Just follow the guidelines below.

1. Visit the App Wizard at http://appwizard.ovi.com. (Believe me you can skip reading all the steps provided below. Just follow the on screen instructions in App Wizard with concentration and you will not feel any thing difficult.)

2. “Get Started” and provide the feed (RSS/Atom) URL of your online website/forums/blog.

  • You will be asked for App Customization Settings (e.g. Colors, App Icon, Logo, Header, Ad Publishing, etc.). Proceed with the desired look and feel.
  • After that the App Specific details have been collected, the App Wizard will take you to the account registration page if you were not signed in already.
  • So If the registration page is shown, that means you need to register. Fill in the form e.g. your credentials, email address [will be used for verification], contact details, and publisher details. (read on before submitting)
  • Remember if you are a developer and have developed apps for Ovi Store, you probably are having a publisher account for Ovi Store. The Registration page for App Wizard you currently are at, will also ask you to provide your publisher account if you have any. So that your Publisher Account will be used to publish this App. If you don’t tell the wizard about your existing publisher account, the wizard will create one for you.

3. Go to your inbox and look for the verification email. Verify the email address for App Wizard account you just created. If you don’t receive any email in time, don’t worry you can still proceed with the wizard to add additional publishing details. However you will be required to verify the email address later before you can submit your App for Ovi Store.

4. Choose one or more of the mobile advertising providers or skip choosing none of them.

5. Provide publishing information and distribution choices for this app to show on Ovi Store (e.g. App description, keywords, pub description, pub logo, App category, App distribution, Price point)

6. Finish it.

– Your App has been created now and should be ready to be published for Ovi Store if the email address has been verified.

– If you see an application listing as following in your dashboard, that means your email address yet needs to be verified. If you still haven’t received the verification email you can request a new verification as obvious in listing.

– Once your email address has been verified, you should be seeing the application listing similar to as follows.

– Click Submit. You will be provided a Final Review emulator to test the App along with a “Edit” and “Submit” buttons. Proceed with submitting and you are done. The Application status would be changed and the listing will be quickly gone to “submitted” state and then later “in review” state.

The application may take about 6 to 8 days to be approved and published to Ovi Store. The application you submitted is not guaranteed to be approved. It’s totally depends on the content you deliver on Ovi Store which should be within the limits of the  guidelines you have been provided. A snapshot of the current guidelines is quoted below and can be changed according to the Nokia’s policies.

These Content Guidelines apply when publishing content to Ovi Store.

The following items are examples of prohibited content:

  • Paid content that circumvents Nokia’s billing platform
  • Content containing copyrighted material you are not authorized to use
  • Content containing nudity, pornography or sexually explicit material
  • Content with graphic or gratuitous violence
  • Content containing ethnic propaganda or other offensive material which attacks or demeans a group or an individual
  • Content disparaging governments or politicians
  • Content showing minors in an exploitative or abusive light
  • Content showing cruelty to animals
  • Content showing distressing content
  • Content that encourages illegal, dangerous or harmful activities
  • Content that contains viruses or harmful code
  • Content that links to websites that contain illegal or inappropriate material
  • Content promoting drugs or drug paraphernalia
  • Content promoting tobacco or tobacco-related products
  • Content promoting prostitution
  • Content and related policies that disrepects a user’s right of privacy

In addition, please keep the following privacy guidelines in mind if your content accesses an end-user’s location information:

  • Provide users with clear and understandable notice about how their location information will be collected, used, disclosed and protected;
  • Provide users with tools that enable them to determine and control whether, when, and with whom their information is shared;
  • Provide, as appropriate, parental controls and child protection tools for users under 18 years of age and their parents or guardians; and
  • Adhere to industry standards regarding the transmission, storage, and access to sensitive personal information like location information

Hope you would have liked the post. Happy creating apps for Ovi Store just in a few minutes.