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Check out my new mobile site

Earlier today I helped someone set up a mobile version of their website and that finally spurred me to launch a mobile site for this blog. (WordPress makes this really easy, in case you were wondering.)

Second Update: Someone showed me a better way to do it, so I’ve killed the mobile domain. Your mobile device should now be auto detected from the main URL.

To be more accurate, I’ve had a mobile theme since late August (which you could access through a theme switcher widget). What I added today was a specific domain for the mobile theme. I’m currently using a theme called Carrington Mobile. I’ve tried it on a  number of different screen sizes and I like it. (But if you know of one that you like better, let me know.)

the-digital-reader.com

While I’m on the topic of mobile themes, I have a question for you. Four percent of my visitors are running Android, but not very many visitors are using the mobile theme.  (I’m tracking the traffic.) I’d really like to find out why the mobile theme wasn’t used much; maybe it’s something I could change. Answered: My old way of switching to a mobile theme was clunky. I thought it worked okay, but apparently no one else knew it was there.

Any feed back would be appreciated.

Update: Thanks to early feedback, I’ve enabled browser detection.  If you are visiting from a mobile device you’ll be kicked over to the mobile theme. Don’t worry, you can switch back. I’d prefer not to do browser detection, but if this works for people I’m fine with it.

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Comments


Mike Cane February 6, 2011 um 12:15 pm

Hm, WordPress.com automagically does a mobile version and it’s better looking than that on the iPhone. Weird how there are different approaches to doing a mobile version.

Nate the great February 6, 2011 um 12:33 pm

What does WordPress.com do for this? Are you talking about something that looks like this, or something else?


anon February 6, 2011 um 12:24 pm

peeps may not be using the mobile theme because they don’t know and also your site (or wordpress) may not automatically sense the mobile browser to therefore switch to the mobile theme. i’m on an iphone and using twitter-for-iphone and it gave me the full desktop version of the page. now when you mention the mobile version, i had to look for where to switch that on your page and manually select the mobile theme.

Nate the great February 6, 2011 um 12:30 pm

Thanks. I hadn’t thought of that. (You’ve just explained why I should be doing browser detection. )


anon February 6, 2011 um 12:31 pm

found the same thing when i tried your site in safari on my iphone – that i had to manually select the mobile theme. otherwise i’m doing the reverse-pinch to zoom in on the text in the desktop version of the page to read your posts


anon February 6, 2011 um 12:40 pm

no idea. i assumed either you could either tweak your page or do something in wordpress settings. you’re ahead of me on that since i don’t actually do wordpress


Moriah Jovan February 6, 2011 um 1:52 pm

I installed Carrington Mobile on my blog quite a while back and enabled auto detect. Very clean and fast.


Piotr Kowalczyk February 7, 2011 um 7:21 am

Generally I’d keep it as simple as possible: one mobile theme installed with a mobile browser detection. No mobile address is needed. The information somewhere, that a blog can be accessed from mobile devices is enough for people to open the site from a mobile phone next time.

Actually when I opened a regular site from an iPhone a message appears: You’ve requested the desktop site, but you appear…"
It’s just one screen too much.
Automatic mobile theme detection may not work, if you use a theme switcher plugin.


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