WordPress Mobile Edition
Submitted by MobilizeToday on 2010-01-14 10:35
At one of our previous blog posts we reviewed mobile web version for WordPress admin console. Just to remind you our conclusion was that plugin itself worked great at iPhone but has different issues at other platforms (mainly because of no recent development happened) and has gaps from a functional coverage perspective in comparison to what standard desktop version allows. Even with above issues we believe that it still can be used for basic functionality and useful for other then iPhone (those who can't install WordPress app) users.
This time we decided to continue WordPress plugins reviews related to mobile web and today we would like to take a look at another popular plugin that allows you to make your blog mobile friendly. You may get it from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mobile-edition/ and it's name is WordPress Mobile Edition.
Installation The installation is rather straightforward and described at plugin's WordPress page. It consists of 2 steps: copy of two files to WP with following activation of plugin from an admin console.
Mobile detection approach The way plugin decides that you're coming from a mobile device is by using 'User-Agent" HTTP header your browser sends with every request to the web server. You need to maintain list of user-agents values valid for mobile version of your blog through WordPress admin console. To do this, go to Settings->Mobile. Main disadvantage of used approach is that you need to update the list whenever new version of mobile device and/or mobile browser is released.
Mobile Web Look & Feel We tested at iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Palm Pre, Blackberry Storm devices and mobile blog look an feel is almost consistent across all of them with some exceptions.
Mobile Web Look & Feel: Corners For example at Palm Pre background color is still visible under rounded corners, but this is more related to browser's implementation of CSS3 features:
Mobile Web Look & Feel: Navigation Each blog page has links to navigate to previous and/or next blog posts through top bar, so when header is long it will be cut off. Palm Pre has no vertical line that separates previous and next options. Under Internet Explorer Mobile background images are moved around and home icon is no longer at the left of caption but instead is placed at the center of the screen right under the header.
At the bottom of the page you may do search and/or go to recent posts and pages. Even if there is no static pages the "Pages" navigation option is present, so if tapped user gets an empty screen. This could be treated as a minor plugin issue.
Also at the very bottom user has a option to switch to the desktop version of the blog but this did not work at Blackberry devices used in this review. Once user gets to the desktop version there is an option to switch back to "Mobile Edition".
There is only one design theme for mobile available with this plugin. Once user gets to a mobile version of the site it looses all the benefits of original desktop design. All blogs powered with this plugin will get the same default design.
Summary We could say that reviewed plugin achieves the main goal of making a WordPress blog mobile friendly. Mobile edition of your blog would have simple design that will give to the end users enough comfort level for blog posts browsing at almost all mobile devices. Obviously if you'd like to have less tedious blog look and feel - you would need to look for other options.