As a follow-up to my post about the iSite’s iPhone and Android app-building service, I wanted to cover an alternative way to bring your WordPress-based site to mobile devices. WordPress Mobile Edition by Crowd Favorite is very quick and easy way to create a very stripped-down, simplified version of your site for mobile devices.
This plugin is actually a plugin/theme combo pack, which adds a few steps to the plugin installation processs. After you download and unzip the files using the link above, you’ll find both the plugin file, wp-mobile.php, and a folder called “carrington-mobile-1.0.2.” Place the plugin file in the wp-content/plugins directory and the Carrington theme in the wp-content/theme directory. After you activate the plugin, visitors using mobile devices will be redirect to the new minimalist, gray theme.
The plugin’s settings page, which can be found other the Settings menu in the backend of WordPress, allows you to edit lists of mobile and touch device browsers that will be redirected to the mobile theme. I’ve removed the iPhone and Android from our list as I find the full site more usable and better-looking on my iPhone than the alternative theme. You should consider doing similar testing with your site and soliciting customer feedback to determine what platforms really need a specialized mobile theme and which should continue to see your standard design.
Speaking of feedback, if you’re using a mobile device to access ReadyMadeWeb, please leave a comment below and let us know how the site looks and performs on your device.
Overall, this plugin is great—it provides a very easy-to-navigate alternative to a standard theme. But, it would be nice to have some basic customization of the theme—like choosing a new color palette—built into the plugin’s settings menu. Additionally, building-in or at least linking to a mobile phone emulation/testing website would be helpful. That said, none of this takles away from the fact that this plugin is a great alternative to creating multiple website-as-app solutions for individual platforms like the iPhone or Android.
For more on mobile plugins for WordPress, check out the list of top WordPress mobile plugins at WordPress feed.
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